Lightning Tent (English)
by TCGA
Summary: In every potential relationship there's always someone who needs to move on, and someone who needs to try. [Post-Savitar].
1. Chapter 1

**Hey!**

 **I decided to translate another one of my fics. This is one is five chapters long and I started when we were halfway through Season 3 of The Flash, so there might be some inaccuracies. I also imagine this happening on Season 5.**

 **Thank you for reading and, again, please excuse my grammar.**

 **This are some of the songs I got inspiration from:**

 _ **Push - Matchbox 20 (Barry)**_

 _ **Torn - Natalie Imbruglia (Caitlin)**_

 _ **Out of Goodbyes (feat. Lady Antebellum) - Maroon 5**_

* * *

"You should really be asking him," Barry said on the phone, sitting at his kitchen table. "If it's a surprise, don't do any modifications to the old one and make a new one. He'll have a spare."

He stopped hearing Cisco's talk the minute Caitlin stepped out of his bathroom in a towel. Realizing that was the first time he had seen her awake since the night before, Barry winked at her.

"Yes, I'm still here," Barry told Cisco. "Yes, Cisco, I know that it would take me ten seconds to appear in the lab and help you decide what to do with Wally's mask, but I won't do it because it's stupid." He shrugged at Caitlin, who smiled and shook her head. "Who cares if anyone thinks that there's a new speedster in town? Just make another mask, same color. Remember that Wally will probably stop by tomorrow. Goodbye."

Caitlin, who apparently didn't want to make any noise near the phone, finally started walking around Barry's new (and smaller) apartment. Barry knew by experience that some women didn't like men they had just spent the night with stared, so he took advantage of the few seconds she spent picking up her clothes, spread across the living room. He could finally look at her without pretending she wasn't beautiful. Damn, she was.

"Right. You need to change," Barry remembered, snapping his fingers.

"Barry, it's not ne…" she tried, but a rush of air blew her wet hair back and the speedster reappeared in front of her, holding a change of clothes. "…cessary. Thank you."

Barry's satisfied smile evaporated when Caitlin started walking back to the bathroom, with the same facial expression she had whenever he tried to talk to her while she was busy.

He cleared his throat loudly.

"Is everything alright between us?" he asked, directly.

Caitlin stopped in her tracks and turned around so slowly that Barry sensed he'd get a no for an answer.

"Of course," she replied, though. Caitlin Snow would never deny a smile to a loved one or a friend, but the one she had in that moment wasn't convincing. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"La-last night…" Barry stuttered, putting his hands behind his head. "You fell asleep before we could really… talk."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Barry knitted an eyebrow, confused.

"You and me. Last night," he repeated, patiently.

Caitlin shrugged, flustered. Barry had to remind himself that the same girl had just used his shower and, since he had to run to her apartment to get her a change of clothes, he was one hundred percent sure he hadn't accidentally time traveled and erased… the act of love.

"Very funny," he laughed, reaching out to grab her hand and feel her body temperature. Caitlin's powers were somehow connected to her emotional state, so they kind of worked as an indicator of mood swings. And she was, indeed, very cold. "I still have some time to buy you breakfast."

In a last attempt to stop things from getting more awkward, Barry leaned his face for a kiss. Caitlin didn't try to stop him or showed any sign of consent, so he refrained himself, resting his forehead against hers. They were so close that Barry could feel her cold breath hitting his upper lip, confirming his theory: that wasn't one of her good days.

"As I said," she emphasized, pulling her forehead away to break their contact. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Barry snorted.

"Don't do that," he begged, with a note of exasperation in his tone. "Not with me."

"What?" she asked, for real this time.

"Don't close yourself off. I am not some random guy."

Caitlin leaned forward and buried her face on Barry's shirt, groaning in frustration.

"I needed some space," she explained, straightening up to look at him. "I wanted to be out of here before you could wake up and make that face."

"What face?" Barry exclaimed, angrily. Hearing that she had planned to sneak out offended him deeply.

"That face, Barry! The Let's-Talk-About-Our-Feelings-Face!"

"Caitlin, I'm offering to buy you breakfast, not asking you to marry me…. And I certainly wasn't planning to make things awkward, I just wanted us to get something to eat before work, like we've done thousands of times before… like any other day."

 _You tried to kiss her like a minute ago, dude,_ he told himself, feeling verbally impotent.

"Barry, look around you: this is not how 'any other day' looks like," she said, looking down at the hand he was still holding. "Cisco, you and I… we're a family, and I'm not gonna jeopardize that just because you and I have the same knack for making bad decisions when we feel lonely. And you're right, I don't need to shut you out, so here I go: I don't know what we were thinking, but we're still friends. I don't want to talk about what happened, I don't want to go out with you or have any physical contact I wouldn't have with a brother. What I do want is that, as soon as we cross your front door, we forget about this enough to act normal at STAR Labs. No one, no one should find out about this."

"Cait," Barry mumbled, in protest. "You said you needed _some_ space… but I'm kinda seeing the entire Milky Way in front of me right now."

"Please," she insisted.

As much as Barry wanted to argue and look neutral at the same time, his jaw clenching gave him away. He could feel his own disappointment all over his features.

What had he expected to happen? He should've stayed in bed with her that morning or taken some extra time in the shower to think about what to tell her, considering that it was fair to declare their friendship ruined.

But no, he had spent five minutes discussing speedster fashion with Cisco.

"You're right," he said, broody. "I think it's unfair to say that last night wasn't good or fun…" He paused when he saw Caitlin giving a disapproving look, implying how serious she was about forgetting the whole thing. "But you're right. We are friends."

"Good friends," she pointed out, apparently satisfied with their resolution. "I know you're a gentleman, Barry. You don't need to prove me anything. I'm a grown woman, I'm not fantasizing about dates or holding hands. I'm good. Nothing has to change."

"Nothing has to change."

Barry knew that Caitlin wasn't being unconsidered or selfish. She simply didn't know how he _really_ felt about her. From where she was standing, he was just trying not to break the emotional connection so abruptly. Nevertheless, the only proof he had to validate his recently discovered feelings was the palpable tension that had fell on the living room during the hour they spent watching tv in his couch, and maybe the lame excuse he made to exclude Cisco from the invitation to movie night. Even before that, there were all those times he found himself staring at Caitlin for too long and feeling a strong 'what if?' pounding in his head. She wouldn't buy that, though. He had dated other people and married (and divorced) a girl he had loved half his life.

He couldn't tell her.

She would never believe him.

Hurt as he felt, Barry had nothing left to say. Nothing that didn't sound generic. He just knew he wanted more and, if Caitlin hadn't made the first move in that couch, he would've made it two seconds later.

"My turn to ask: are we good?" Caitlin questioned, with a friendly tone that sounded a lot more like herself.

"Of course we are," he chuckled, in pain.

"Thanks for inviting me over." She tiptoed to place a quick kiss in his cheek. Her lips were so cold that the warmness of a whole night of spooning seemed unreal now. "I know you wanted us to escape routine… but that went a little too far."

Caitlin's smile felt like a punch in Barry's ribs. He could feel the weight of his three previous break ups on his shoulders. Although this didn't exactly count as one, he was having trouble processing.

And maybe he was being too dramatic, but Caitlin was the last person he ever thought he'd break up with.

"I have to go to work now," he told her. "Lock the door, please."

Barry took a step back at superspeed and watched as the room went slower. Carefully, he tried to let go of Caitlin's hand, only to find out that he couldn't, because a string of lightning had been released in between, tying them together. He raised his arm in an attempt to break it, but the little thing pulled him back violently.

Barry sighed and avoided looking at Caitlin's face, even though she couldn't see him do anything at that speed.

"Nothing has to change," he recited.

Barry flashed to the door forcefully. Before exiting, he looked at Caitlin out of the corner of his eye. Once the connection was broken, she got an electric shock that made her jump back and look around, confused.

* * *

When you're a speedster, it's very unlikely to find obstacles in your way, because it only takes you a few seconds to go from one place to another. However, Barry suffered from something that hadn't happened to him in years: he tripped.

Luckily, he had fallen to the floor of an alley he used to take as a shortcut, so no one saw a stranger emerging from The Flash's characteristic lightning.

"What…?" he whined, trying to get up, but a burning pain in his leg prevented him from doing so.

If his math was correct, he had dragged his knee half a meter across the concrete floor.

 _Great. Just great,_ he thought, rolling up his pants leg.

He had expected to see the bone exposed, but what he found didn't any make sense: the monstrous injury had already been replaced by a long scar that was just starting to disappear as well, with blood bubbling all over it.

Barry rubbed his bloody hands on his thighs and stood up. He had no idea what he had tripped on, but that recently acquired ability wasn't something to complain about. Once the pain ceased, he went on his path.

* * *

That morning was slow and tortuous for Barry. The only case he had gotten in three hours wasn't even official: a metahuman that could phase through solids and had been MIA for a month. He didn't even bother to read the file.

Once he finished his lunch in a park bench, he rushed back to the CCPD. Everything promised to continue just as boring and normal, until he reached his de lab and bumped into his desk painfully.

"What? Again?" he gasped, taking a deep breath that made him dizzy. His hands were vibrating against the wood.

He looked down to rest from a sudden and overwhelming headache, when he noticed his watch.

3:05 PM.

How?

He had left the park at three o'clock. There was no way it had taken him that long to get back to the lab. Unless his watch was broken, there were five minutes missing from his memory. He hadn't stopped to catch some bad guy or prevent an accident. He should've been back there at three o'clock.

And what were those symptoms? His heart rate was increased (for him) and the pounding in his temples was already unbearable. Even weirder: he was exhausted, but he didn't feel like resting.

He wanted to run.

Before even realizing it, Barry found himself one meter closer to the south corner of his lab, like his feet had just slid there by themselves. His first instinct was to look for something to hold onto, but he fell to the floor before he could even try. His legs had started shaking uncontrollably.

Although he couldn't fully explain those phenomena, Barry knew them well: he had experienced them in the alley behind the police station, four years earlier. It was him tapping into the speed force for the first time.

But, why was this happening again? And why couldn't he remember the last five minutes?

"BARRY!" Joe yelled, dropping the folder in his hands as he worked his way into the lab.

"Joe!" Barry yelled back, between spasms. "Help me!"

Once he reached his side, cop fell on his knees and forced Barry's legs down with his arm.

"I got you… I got you," he panted.

Barry let out a sigh of relief. Little by little, he felt gravity steading him on the floor.

He looked up at Joe, cracking a smile.

"Thank you," he whispered. "I thought I was…"

"Vanishing?" Joe let let out, frantically.

"Yeah. Seems likely."

"'Seems likely'? You don't know what that was?"

"Not yet."

Joe turned around, exhaling angrily. He had dealt with freaky stuff for four years now, but seeing Barry or Wally in danger was something he'd never get used to.

"I'm gonna call Cisco," he informed, pulling out his phone.

"Yes… NO!" Barry huffed, taking the phone from Joe's hand.

"Why not? I need to drive you to STAR Labs, with a seat belt on."

"Be-be-because Cisco is busy with this… thing..."

Barry stopped himself right there, realizing that there was no point on dismissing the Cisco option, because it wasn't him who would examine him anyway.

He felt some sort of gravity center set in his stomach, like a singularity, increasing his angst with every spin. As a direct extension from that sensation, an intrusive thought broke into Barry's mind: STAR Labs.

"You're right. I have to go," he said; those words coming out of his mouth almost involuntarily. "STAR Labs. I have to go."

"Of course I'm right," Joe hissed, placing a hand on Barry's shoulder. "Is Caitlin there?"

"Yes."

Obviously, being at STAR Labs was a part of Caitlin's routine but, strangely, his answer wasn't based on that. Barry was entirely and overwhelmingly sure that she was there. He could almost see her sitting in the cortex.

Wait, what?

"Let's go to the car then," Joe said, putting his other hand on Barry's opposite shoulder and guiding him towards the parking lot.

* * *

Barry only let Joe drive him to STAR Labs because he didn't know what could've happened to him on his way there. At least he had convinced him not to go in with him, because he wasn't exactly planning on telling his friends anything yet. His problem was obviously physical and it would bring him at least fifteen minutes alone with Caitlin, who he was barely ready to see.

As he went up in the elevator, Barry's hands started to vibrate inside his pockets, but the tiny singularity in his stomach begun to slow down. He thought that last thing was kinda paradoxical, considering he was now closer to the source of his anxiety.

From the minute Barry had escaped their conversation that morning, he had also tried his best not to think about Caitlin. At least not too much. But, since Joe had mentioned the lab, he had been imagining (or seeing) Caitlin sitting in front of a computer, with one hand on the mouse and the other twirling around the end of her ponytail. Focusing on that had somehow helped him not to vibrate out of control inside of the car.

The elevator finally reached level 600 and Barry got out of the elevator with a deep sigh.

 _I'm okay,_ he told himself. _Or at least I'm okay with not being okay._

Before crossing the door, Barry saw Cisco and Caitlin turning around on their chairs.

"Hey, man. You're early," Cisco greeted him. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah," Barry lied.

"Any news on… anything?" Caitlin asked.

When Barry bravely turned to Caitlin to answer, his heart skipped a beat, and the neutral facial expression he had practiced was replaced for one of pure disbelief.

Caitlin had a ponytail.

Just like in his recent 'vision' of her.

 _I don't have hair dryer, she couldn't do her hair. It doesn't mean anything. Now act normal,_ he thought, rationally.

"Hey," he said, as he reached out for a handshake.

Caitlin raised her eyebrows when she saw him lower his hand quickly.

 _THAT'S NOT NORMAL._

"Caitlin," Barry said this time, clearing his throat and nodding awkwardly.

"Yes, that's Caitlin. I introduced her to you years ago, Barry," Cisco commented, standing up to pat Barry on the back. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Barry then felt his hands vibrating again, so he hid them inside his pockets. "I didn't sleep well…" —he made eye contact with Caitlin right after finishing that sentence and, when he saw her frowning, he corrected himself immediately—"I didn't mean…!"—he then realized that talking to Caitlin so directly wasn't too smart, so he turned to look at Cisco—"I had a great night, okay?"

He covered his head with his hands in desperation and almost lost his cool when Caitlin, who remained impressively collected, rushed to his rescue.

"Barry, what did I tell you about those caffeine pills I gave you?" she scolded him, tilting her head subtly. "Half a pill equals a big cup of coffee, remember? Two of them might alter your sleep and your cognitive functions severely…"

"Wha…? Right, half a pill. I didn't get that the first time," Barry said, once Caitlin bumped the tip of her shoe with his. "I'm sorry, I've been doing extra hours at the CCPD because we don't have that much to do here and I'm a little tired…"

Caitlin gave him a condescending smile, like she was trying to tell him that he didn't need to over explain himself. Barry smiled back, admired.

If he hadn't been so afraid of messing up everything again, he would've told her how pretty she looked.

"I know, this place looks like a zombie proof bunker," Cisco agreed, looking around, without realizing he had just broken a silent exchange between his two friends. "I don't even remember the last time we were busy. No new meta sightings, no psycho speedsters… I'm gaining weight", he added, palming his belly.

"Cisco, for the last time: I didn't find anything new in your last medical exam," Caitlin intervened.

"So, I haven't lost weight either."

Barry's chuckle was interrupted by another sudden headache. The back of his head was pulsating.

Trying to be casual, he leaned into the desk, between his two best friends.

"Does anyone want to train?" he offered, almost desperately.

Maybe the physical effort would prevent him from flashing out the lab. There was no point on making anyone worried yet.

"No, thank you," Cisco said. "I did an interdimensional trip yesterday and I am still tired."

"Earth-38?" Barry asked, wearily. "Cisco, I'm pretty sure that Kara is still seeing that guy…"

"Hey, hey. Hop off your pony." Cisco put his hand over his chest, trying to look monumentally offended. "I was visiting Winn."

"Last time I checked, he was seeing someone too."

Caitlin choked on the sip of water she had just drank from a bottle and let out a short laugh. It had always been hard to make someone laugh when Cisco was in the room, especially girls, so Barry couldn't hide his smug smile.

"Alright, Joker, you're cancelled," the mechanic engineer replied, half joking. "Why don't you go to the Speed Room and run in circles for the rest of the day?"

"Because it's just as boring as it sounds," Barry said, turning to his other friend. "What do you say, Caitlin?"

"No. You know I don't enjoy patching wounds I caused," she said.

"Who says you'll hit me this time?"

"The fact I always do. We got dummies for a reason."

"Excuse me?"

"I mean the 'training dolls", dummy."

"Oh, right"

Barry rolled his eyes when Cisco requested a high five from Caitlin and both laughed at him. He couldn't waste more time begging them. His headache was unbearable and he could feel the speed force coursing through his body. If he didn't run immediately, his body would probably force him to.

"Speaking of that room, we need to fix the door," he told Cisco. "I'll open it from here. Excuse me," he told Caitlin, leaning over the computer she was using.

When Barry was about to straight up, his elbow accidentally touched Caitlin's. He had predicted the contact half a second before it happened, as his heart started throbbing in his chest. A strong jolt traveled through his arm and, when it reached the mouse he was holding, it generated a short-circuit that fried the computer.

Both Cisco and Caitlin backed off from the small detonation.

"What just happened?" she asked, watching the broken, flickering screen.

"I don't know," Barry answered, stunned.

He wasn't just referring to the damaged computer, but the fact his headache had just disappeared and his body wasn't craving locomotion anymore.

Barry took a deep breath and looked at Caitlin. Joe had somehow anchored him before, but she had just done way more than that. The electricity had been isolated from his body, like he was an electronic device that had just been unplugged.

Feeling a little itch, he touched the back of his neck and found a thick layer of sweat.

"Barry?" Caitlin stood up and cupped his face in her hands. "You're burning up!"

"I'm fine", he protested, looking straight into her eyes, but doing nothing to escape her touch. He had missed her. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You have never been this hot…"

"'I have _never_ been this hot'? And then you complain about your flirting game not being strong at the bar..."

"I'm serious, Barry. You won't walk out this lab before I run some tests…"

"Then I'll flash out of here, because I don't need them."

"Enough, you two," Cisco said. "Barry, I'm sorry, but I agree with Caitlin on this one: you're pale enough to play the next version of Nosferatu."

Caitlin tried to shove Barry to the cortex's exit, but he didn't move.

"Are you coming?" he asked Cisco, who was unplugging the now useless computer.

"No, I'll try and see if I can recover some data from this thing," he answered.

"For real?!"

"Yes, for real. Why? Do you want me to hold your hand?"

Barry rolled his eyes. Being alone with Caitlin was exactly what he had been trying to avoid. Not to mention that, if his not-so-little problem really had something to do with her, she was the last person he wanted to figure it out.

"See what you do?" Cisco told Caitlin, who nervously tensed her grip on Barry's arm. "He's been afraid of you since you removed his wisdom teeth."

"He came to me whining about how they were crooking his teeth. Not my fault that the tissue kept on closing around them," Caitlin said, playing along. Her relief was obvious to Barry, but not to Cisco.

Since there was no point on denying that something was wrong, Barry allowed Caitlin to escort him to the exit and then guide him through the hallway until they reached the med bay.

Once they were inside, she pushed him to the medical table and started unbuttoning his shirt, which triggered a very inconvenient memory from the night before.

Barry crossed his legs, just in case.

"Cold hands! Cold hands" he complained. "I don't think my fever is that high anymore, you don't need to use your powers."

"I am not using them," Caitlin said, reaching for the cart with the electrocardiograph. "I'm sorry. I should drink some coffee."

As soon as Caitlin finished placing the round, sticky pads all over his torso Barry, driven by an impulse, grabbed her free hand. A forgotten sense of vulnerability had taken over him. A vulnerability he hadn't felt since the last time he saw his mother sitting next to his bedside, so many years before. A vulnerability that allowed him to admit when he was sad, sick or disheartened… because he was safe in the hands of the person in front of him.

That was the reason why he wasn't worried about his symptoms: Caitlin would never let anything bad happen to him. And, even when this had always been that way, he had never felt so sure of it like that day.

Nothing has to change… yeah, right.

"I really wanted to talk to you," Barry admitted. That wasn't exactly what he wanted to say, but there was no coherent way of explaining how much he needed her company. He even felt some remorse for trying to avoid her, even though he didn't give her the time to realize he was doing it.

"We talked this morning," Caitlin reminded him, laughing. She didn't try to push him away and even intertwined her fingers with his, but the neutrality in her voice was frustrating. "Wow, your heart rate and metabolism seem to be more accelerated than usual," she explained, looking at her screens. "It's like you had recovered from a major effort, but you weren't doing anything back in the cortex. Has anything else happened?"

"Yeah, this morning." Barry noticed the first signs of disapproval in Caitlin's look. "I lost control… I mean I tripped and fell down to the floor. I never trip."

"Is that blood?!"

Caitlin's eyes had laid on his knees right after he mentioned the fall.

"It's healed. That's what I was trying to tell you," he chuckled, rolling up his pants to show a very tiny pink scar. "Nothing weird happened until my lunch break: when I got back to the lab, I felt a strong desire of running… I could barely control my powers. It took me five minutes to get there from the park and I don't remember stopping. I was tired…"

"If it started this morning, why didn't you call me?" Caitlin asked. Barry had sensed her anger before, but didn't have the guts to lie to her. "Why didn't you come to us immediately?

Barry shrugged.

"I was giving you some space," he answered, trying not to sound resentful.

"BARRY!" Caitlin yelled, pulling the pads off his skin furiously. Barry groaned when part of his scarce chest hair got stuck to the adhesive. "I thought we were good! No matter what happens between us, you have to tell me when something is wrong with you."

"Relax, alright? The worst part is over. Joe appeared while I was convulsing and stopped me from vanishing." Caitlin covered her face with one hand, trying to summon some patience. "I'm not helping," Barry guessed. She shook her head in response and let out a sigh. Barry knew that he shouldn't be enjoying her concern so much, but he couldn't help it. "You're oddly overprotective today. Why is that?"

Barry had expected her to shield behind the same iciness she had displayed that morning, but she looked at him with surprisingly soft eyes.

"Nice try," she said, helping him to button his shirt up, like that was some sort of metaphor. "Nothing has changed, remember?"

"I know that's what we agreed on," Barry said, unsure of how to continue that sentence. "But there are details I can't ignore. I mean, now you know how I look naked…"

Barry cringed at his own stupidity, but he wanted to challenge her to talk about their miscarriage. He knew that, out of his Flash suit, Caitlin was way out of his league. Did she think that, though? Was she only into buffed guys?

"Last night I didn't see anything that I hadn't seen in those nine months you were in a coma," Caitlin replied, shrugging. Barry's eyebrows shot up. "What? Who did you think that took care of you? No nurse would've wanted to set foot in STAR Labs."

"You? Oh, no… you?!" Barry exclaimed, mortified. "You…? Everything?" Caitlin nodded at each one of his short questions. "Oh, crap, that's just gross. How could you sleep with me after that?"

"Lower your voice!"

Barry covered his mouth with his hands a little too late. Caitlin looked around and approached one of her tables.

"Cisco? Harry?" she called out. There was no answer from the speakers. "Thank God this thing wasn't on… Barry, let it go. I'm a doctor… and you're a forensic scientist who knows that I've done worse."

"Worse than me?" he said, slyly.

"Worse than a coma guy."

"I know, it was a joke… and I am sorry if I never thanked you for it. Thank you."

"For what? The sex?" she asked. Barry raised an eyebrow. "What? I can make jokes too."

They both grinned. Talking to Caitlin had always been so easy. Barry couldn't help but imagine how well a first date with her would go, because he had never felt more comfortable talking about uncomfortable things.

Barry had learned the hard way that wanting someone wasn't enough for them to want you back. He wanted to respect her wishes, but couldn't wrap his mind around them. Not with the night before still so vivid in his mind.

He didn't need to know what a one-night stand felt like to know that hadn't been one.

"Maybe we can count that as my way to pay you back," Barry continued, wondering if he hadn't gone too far, but Caitlin tagged along.

"Yeah? That will be your way of returning favors from now on?" she laughed.

"Not everyone's favors…"

Barry failed to find a way to continue. Instead, he leaned towards Caitlin.

With a politeness he'd probably be thankful for later, she turned her head once he got too close to her lips. Disheartened, he placed his kiss in her cheek.

"You're generating too much static," she whispered, like nothing had happened, pulling away from him and placing her thumb on his lower lip to show him where it was coming from. "Do you have any idea of how you fried that computer?"

Barry felt the need to leave the room and punch a hole in the wall. Trying to kiss her again wasn't a smart move on his part, but the way she was treating him was driving him crazy. Why had she kissed him first the night before? Did she already know she would regret it? The worst part was that, despite the anger, Barry was more worried about her than himself. There was a storm brewing in her eyes, something she felt too afraid to share, and the last thing he wanted her to think was that he was just messing around. Maybe the right call was confessing that night meant something to him, without pouring his whole heart out yet.

Swallowing his pride, he decided to cooperate.

"Uhm…" he mumbled, realizing that the entire truth would bring back the awkwardness. "I-I-I don't know… just that I felt better as soon as it happened. My head had been hurting since I stepped into the cortex and my hands were already vibrating. That's why I wanted to do some exercise, to prevent myself from disappearing again."

Caitlin nodded and stared at the electrocardiogram once again.

"Of course," she concluded, waving her hands. "You weren't wrong about the exercise. You've been accumulating energy from the speedforce!" She had placed one of the electrodes back on his chest, and the screen started to flick. As soon as she removed it, the flickering stopped to show normal activity. "See? We've spent the last three years training you to make you faster, but things have been so quiet lately that you don't spend the energy you generate. The computer worked as lightning rod and isolated part of that energy from your body. That's why you feel better."

 _Right. The computer,_ Barry thought. He had been sweating since the 'of course', so her resolution was a big relief. She seemed to be right about everything else, though.

"You got all that from an electrocardiogram?" Barry asked, pleasantly surprised.

"I've located metahumans from the particles found in your suit and this impresses you?"

Barry laughed briefly. Even though Caitlin had been low key hurting him since that morning, that last sentence helped him realize why he was the one feeling like a jerk: He had never been conscious of how amazing Caitlin Snow was. At least not enough. Instead, he had always taken her for granted.

Pushing didn't seem a wise thing to keep doing, but Barry had to do something before someone else beat him to it.

He had to be fast enough this time.

"You're amazing," he said, a little choked up by the way Caitlin was still measuring his temperature, double checking that he was okay before finishing her exam. That little thing reminded him of many other little things he had never seen as a big deal, and he felt even more unworthy. "I haven't been a very good friend to you, have I?"

It was in that moment Barry knew he screwed up. Caitlin dropped the thermometer and ducked her head, breathing heavily. Just when Barry was about to hop off the medical table to reach her, he saw it: a pair of icy blue pupils changing back to brown.

He tried his best not to panic, just like Caitlin was trying her best to calm down.

"Caitlin?" he said, approaching her very slowly. "You okay?"

"No, you need to stop that!" she breathed out, stepping back anxiously and pointing a shaky finger at him. "You need to stop that. Right now."

"Stop what?"

"You know exactly what. I gave you an easy way out, what the hell are you doing?"

The brief transformation had left Barry too shocked to answer that last question, because one more of those strange speedforce hunchs was telling him to pretend he hadn't seen what he saw. Caitlin was entirely sure that Killer Frost was gone, but the slightest sign of doubt from anyone else could be enough to break that confidence and bring her back.

"I…"

Before Barry could continue that sentence, Caitlin took a slow step forward and put a finger to her lips to ask him to stop talking. She was staring at some spot behind him with fierce eyes. Before he could ask what was wrong this time, she pointed at the cart with the electrocardiograph.

It didn't take him that long to find the source of her concern: the small, round mirror she used to make throat examinations was reflecting a silhouette whose owner wasn't in that room with them.

"Missed me?" the guy said from behind the glass, once Barry got closer.

* * *

 **Well, it was pretty obvious who that was, but I suck at cliffhangers haha. Thank you! I'll translate Chapter 2 as soon as I can.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello! I'm so sorry it took me so long!**

 **I'm kind of in a hurry here, so I'll just say 3 things:**

 **1\. I realized that some of you seemed confused because I used the word "miscarriage" in the first chapter. I apologize for that. As I've said many times, english is my second language. I used that word as an alternative for "mistake" (sleeping together was a mistake), I didn't mean to imply that Barry and Caitlin had lost a baby. They've only slept together once.**

 **2\. I know we have a couple of rough weeks ahead, so... be still! And keep a bucket near while you watch the crossover lol**

 **3\. Excuse my grammar xD**

 **The songs I used to write this chapter are:**

 _"Careful"_ \- Michelle Featherstone.

 _"State of Grace"_ \- Taylor Swift.

 _"Hunger"_ \- Ross Copperman.

 _"Not Today"_ \- Imagine Dragons.

* * *

"Scudder," Barry grumbled, taking the mirror from the cart and holding it at his eye level.

"Allen," Mirror Master laughed from his prison. "Barry Allen. That's your real name, isn't it?"

"What do you want? How did you get here?"

"I followed your girlfriend." The reflection's little fingers pointed at Caitlin, who frowned. "Humble girl. She would've seen me if she spent more time looking in mirrors."

Barry tried his best to hide his uneasiness. Great. That was just great. Since Scudder had probably followed Caitlin from his apartment, he didn't only know his identity, but also his address. The good news was that he didn't know hers.

"So, what are you up to?" Barry mocked him. "You can't escape the mirror prison."

"Oh, it's not me you should worry about…"

"Barry!"

From the corner of his eye, Barry saw a thin figure emerge, apparently out of nowhere. Caitlin, who was still facing the wall, swung her arm in that direction. A curtain of frost came out and hit the wall.

Barry turned around and what he saw left him speechless: where he had expected to find a man standing in front of the wall, there was a man… _in_ the wall. His face, part of his chest, and a stretched arm were the only visible parts of his body. He didn't seem to be frozen solid, just paralyzed by a thin layer of ice.

Barry checked the mirror he was holding, only to find it empty. Scudder was gone.

"He's still alive," Caitlin said, looking at what she had done with obvious guilt. "I just immobilized him. He was going to kill you."

"I know, Cait. Thank you," Barry told her, reassuringly. "Joe left me this guy's file this morning." He approached the wall to examine their little crime scene. "Roger Peters. The three people he mugged swore that he fractured their knees… phasing through them with his bare hands."

Barry and Caitlin defensively turned to the door when they heard quick steps and panting in the hallway, and relaxed when Cisco appeared at the door.

"The alarms went off in the cortex, are you guys o…?" he meant to ask, before the sight of the trapped meta startled him. "Holy Han Solo!"

Caitlin, who didn't seem to have the time for explanations, ran to her desk and grabbed a syringe from a drawer.

"What now?" Barry asked, when she placed herself between him and Cisco.

"Now we wait," she said, taking a deep breath.

Immediately, a loud groan made the trio jump back. The metahuman had awaken and was trying to bring the rest of his body out of the wall. Caitlin rushed to his side, raised her arm above her head and stabbed him with the syringe. One second later, he fell to the floor with a loud bang.

"Tranquilizer," Caitlin explained, since her friends seemed in awe. "Now we can lock him up. He still needs to recover, don't forget to turn the heat on."

"You just frosted him up and knocked him out but suuuure, poor thing needs me to turn the heat on," Barry said, sarcastically.

"I used a pretty big dose. He's going to sleep for at least fourteen hours."

"Have you ever wondered what would've happened if she had gone full psycho?" Cisco hypothesized, exchanging an anxious look with Barry. "With her expertise, imagine all the kinds of torture she could've…"

Caitlin gave them a 'for real?' look.

"She hasn't, she obviously hasn't," Barry said with a squeaky voice. "Pipeline!"

He sped out with the meta in his arms to find him a cell. Once he made sure he was correctly placed and locked, Barry returned to the med bay before his friends even started a new conversation.

"What happened?" Cisco finally asked them.

"Scudder," Barry answered, with disdain. "He's still trapped in the Mirror World, but somehow found us and sneaked that metahuman fugitive into the lab. Caitlin took care of him," he added, pointing at her with his thumb.

"It was too easy," Caitlin said.

"Modesty. I love it."

"No, Cisco: it was _too_ easy." She took her mirror from the cart and turned it over, looking for any clue of Mirror Master's intentions. "Why would Scudder send one metahuman against two? He already knew about Barry and our powers…"

"I don't know, but now he also knows where we operate from." Barry approached the closest wall, took down the only mirror in the room and turned it over. "We need to get rid of anything that has a reflecting surface, so he can't see what we're doing when he comes back."

Even with that optimistic belief in mind, Barry put his hands behind his neck. Scudder wasn't the first supervillain to discover his real identity, but he should've put more effort into protecting his friends. Trapping Scudder in the Mirror World had been his idea and, with his new knowledge, could use that against them.

"Guys, you need to stay at my place tonight," Caitlin decided, probably thinking as Barry. "Scudder can't follow us if we breach there. I think it's safer that we stay together until we fix this." She looked around. "Does anyone know where is Harry?"

"Do I smell movie night?" Cisco intervened, rubbing palms together. "Harry? He's giving a lecture or something on Earth-2, in a room full of students to throw things at."

"Oh, shoot. I was looking forward to see you guys spooning in my couch again."

"I got Barry."

Barry hit Cisco in the head with his palm when he blew him a kiss.

* * *

Since Roger Peters' file had all the information they needed at the moment, the team took the time to hide all the objects that had a reflecting surface before breaching to Caitlin's apartment. Once they were there, it was inevitable to turn that security measure into a normal game night. Cisco won four rounds of UNO, before Caitlin and Barry noticed that he was vibing their hands.

After dinner, Caitlin insisted on washing the dishes alone while Cisco and Barry picked a movie. Nevertheless, Barry had almost finished scrolling through Netflix when he felt Cisco's head fall against his shoulder. Rolling his eyes, he gently pushed him to the opposite side until he accommodated against the arm of the couch. His slow-paced breathing was enough to assume he was too far gone already.

Barry hadn't expected to be left alone with no choice but admit that his mind wasn't at ease. After spending two minutes nervously staring at the kitchen door, he got off the couch and tiptoed through the living room.

Caitlin's back was facing him when he reached the door and, from that angle, it seemed like she was trying to dry each plate as slowly as humanly possible.

"Did something happen to the dishwasher?" Barry asked her, stepping into the kitchen.

"No," Caitlin answered, turning around with an unreadable, neutral look on her face. "Why?"

"Because…"

He sped to the sink and, in a few blurry movements, dried all the dishes left and put them back in the cabinets.

"… that was taking forever." Barry finished, taking the towel from Caitlin's shoulder to dry his hands.

"I'm a little obsessive," she excused herself, awkwardly. "Where's Cisco?"

"Sleeping."

"Oh."

Barry put his hands behind his head and exhaled when Caitlin took one step away from him discreetly. He knew that what had happened earlier, before Scudder interrupted them, needed to be addressed, but the tension between them was thicker than he thought it would be.

"I'm sorry about what happened in the med bay," he apologized, trying to keep his distance.

"Well, thank you… but something tells me it won't be the last time," she said, looking down at her hands.

"It's just… you're not making things as easy as you think."

"What do you mean?"

"This."

Barry touched Caitlin's nose with the tip of his finger and a small giggle escaped her lips.

"There it is," he chuckled.

"Yes, I am ticklish. Your point?" she asked.

"And this…"

Barry took a step back, looked at Caitlin up and down and smiled wickedly once he locked eyes with her again.

She giggled away.

"That… had never worked with any girl before," Barry said, unable to hide his surprise. "For some bizarre reason, I make you laugh."

"Stop that. Now," Caitlin warned, rising a finger, unable to hold back the laughter.

"Why should I? You're smiling. And it's a genuine smile, you're using your entire face…"

"Barry Allen, stop hitting on me." She bit her lip, trying to prevent herself from smiling again, but Barry's amused expression seemed to make it impossible. "God, if you could see yourself right now…"

"Do you think I'd be embarrassed? Why?"

"Because… it's _you and me_. It's weird"

"Caitlin, that argument would've been valid almost twenty-four hours ago, before you..." He smiled at the naughty memory that had just popped up. "That wasn't weird. It has never been weird between us."

"Oh, and what do you think this"—she gestured between them— "is or has ever been?"

"An unspoken thing."

Caitlin rolled her eyes and bit her lip nervously when she noticed that Barry had leaned closer and now had her cornered against the kitchen counter.

"What's that unspoken thing?" she enquired, patiently.

"I don't know. That's why it remains unspoken," Barry said, shrugging. "Don't you wanna find out? I mean, this is gonna keep coming back…"

"It doesn't have to… It's just… a physical act, Barry. We can forget about it and move on…"

"It's not what happened that makes me wonder, Caitlin, but _what_ lead us to it." His eyelids felt heavy on his eyes, alerting him of how tenderly he was probably looking at her. "Why it had never happened before? We've spent plenty of time alone these years."

"Fine," Caitlin sighed, crossing her arms and waving her hand to encourage him. "Tell me: what's your theory?"

Barry smirked at her. Any other girl would've snapped at him and told him he was being a creep… but there was Doctor Caitlin Snow, demanding facts.

"I think… we had a green light," he told her, fondly. "Neither of us are hung up on people right now. It's actually the first time since we've known each other."

Caitlin didn't try to look away, but apparently had no intention to comment on that. Barry had expected to find exasperation all over her face, considering how annoying he had been that day, and yet he recognized something very different.

Pain.

Barry had to remind himself that, despite her empathy, Caitlin was still a scientist. Although he didn't know what her specific struggle was, it was obvious that she was trying to rationalize the situation. A situation that was like a dangerous experiment: mixing the wrong ingredients (in this case, feelings) could make things go horribly wrong.

Maybe he needed to stop being so vague.

Okay, there were two things he knew for sure: 1) He was head over heels for Caitlin since the night before, and that was the scariest thing he could possibly say; 2) That hadn't come out of nowhere: He hadn't fabricated feelings overnight, _something_ had awakened inside of him.

If Barry didn't need the speedforce to explain to him how that strange bond worked, he shouldn't need help finding something concrete to tell Caitlin.

"Do you remember the day I signed my divorce papers?" Barry asked, with the first thing that came to mind.

"Yeah," Caitlin answered, wrinkling her forehead.

"You know? I don't. I don't remember much from that day… just what happened at night." Barry smiled at the worried look on her face, happy to see her willing to listen instead of wondering about the sudden change of topic. "I was sitting in a park bench, drinking that disgusting mix of vodka, scotch and gin, knowing it wouldn't get me drunk… I don't know how much time I stayed there until I heard you and Cisco talking behind me… and then you sat next to me, grabbed the bottles and poured yourself a glass…" He cracked up before finishing the sentence. "You raised the full glass at me and said 'cheers', probably the only word we spoke in three hours, and took a deep sip… I was so sure you were gonna puke…"

"Oh, I was definitely about to puke. I even thought about letting myself puke to make you laugh, but that would've been disgusting…"

Caitlin stopped talking suddenly, probably realizing that reminiscing the anecdote wasn't Barry's only intention. Sensing that she was more comfortable with him now, he reached out and placed his hand on her cheek, caressing it with his thumb, hoping to restore some familiarity between them. Despite being an intimate gesture, she closed her eyes thankfully.

"I thought Cisco would be all over me, trying to make me feel better… but only you appeared…" he continued. "What did you tell him? Why did he stay away?"

Caitlin remained still for a few seconds and then let out a long sigh.

"'Let me'" she mumbled.

"What?"

"That's what I told him: 'let me'." Caitlin opened her eyes and gave him a sad smile. "I had a hunch. I approached you as slowly as possible, choosing my words carefully… but, once I got there, I realized there was nothing you could've possibly wanted to hear in that moment… so I just sat there, next to you. I felt like an idiot, but since you weren't exactly hiding… I assumed you didn't want to be alone."

Barry swallowed, fighting down his emotion. Surprisingly, reliving the experience from her point of view had been more enlightening for him than for Caitlin. He had accidentally just dived into one reason why he was falling for her, and it was overwhelming to wonder how many more he had.

Amazed, he placed his other hand on her other cheek, cupping her face and looking down at her with glazed eyes.

"I thought I would never feel okay again," he admitted. "Having you there with me kind of reminded me that the world hadn't ended… I would still have to put on the suit the next day, but you and Cisco would still be there…"

"I am glad to find out, one year later, that I actually helped," she joked.

"Of course you did. You understand, Caitlin" —he brought her face closer to his to emphasize on that—"You always understand better than anyone… It's ironic, now that I think about it… It was like you put a symbolic bandage on me. You're a healer in every sense of the word."

Caitlin didn't say anything, but it surprised him to see her lingering on him for a little bit… and he tried not to look too shocked when she tiptoed and softly crashed her forehead against his.

"I got a secret," she whispered, knotting her hands on his shirt. "You did that first."

"What?" Barry whispered, caressing her nose with his.

"Patch me up… symbolically." Caitlin smiled at Barry's evident confusion. "When Ronnie passed away the first time… coming home after work was the hardest part of the day. I tried to keep myself as busy as I could, and the fact you needed to be watched 24/7 was the perfect excuse to spend my nights at STAR Labs…"

Barry felt strangely glad that she started talking about Ronnie. Not only because it meant she still trusted him, but also because he had been wondering if he'd feel jealous of him now. And he didn't. He'd listen to anything she needed to get out of her chest, no matter how many other guys were involved.

He was falling for her _that_ much.

"I spent most of my time looking through my microscope, doing some research, with you in the next room… but, one day, after checking your vitals, something came over me… and I sat next to your bedside," Caitlin proceeded, with obvious embarrassment. Barry knitted an eyebrow. "Don't worry, I didn't talk to you. I barely knew you." She laughed. "But doing everything with you in the room became some sort of routine. I would do my research, read a book, watch tv…in the company of the only person who wouldn't tilt his head with pity every time I walked into the room… I found you reassuring."

"I was in a comma," Barry chuckled softly, trying not to make it sound like he was making fun of her. "I guess we all know a crazy lady who sits with comma guy at the hospital." He gave her a little wink.

"Well… you turned out to be just as reassuring when you were finally awake."

Barry mirrored her smile, a feeling of relief coming from every portion of skin that was in contact with her. He had spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like he had a missing a limb. She had suddenly taken down all the walls that disappointment and pain had built around his heart in the past year.

"I can't stop thinking about you," Barry said, knowing it was the right time.

"I can't stop thinking about you either," Caitlin confessed, snuggling up to him as he continued stroking her face. "I am so sorry about this morning…"

"It's okay."

"No, it's not…"

"Hey."

Barry pressed his forehead more insistently and affectionally against hers, making it impossible for their eyes not to meet.

"I got you," he promised, ghosting his lips over hers. "It's _me_ this time… and it's gonna be okay and… hey, your heart is beating so fast," he grinned, when her arms snaked around his back and she pressed her body against his.

"You're one to talk," Caitlin said. Her eyelashes hit his when she blinked. "We are gonna wake Cisco up."

"And all your neighbors."

"Barry!" She gave him a small shove.

"Can I kiss you now?"

"Let me."

Smiling, she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. Barry tried keep up by putting his hands on her waist, but he felt his throat close when she brushed her lips against his. Although he had hoped that would happen, he didn't really expect it, and the growing sensation in his belly and chest was a little too much to handle.

When he pulled away to take a breath, Caitlin seemed amused.

"Nervous?" she asked, smugly.

"Me?" he exclaimed, pretending to be offended. "Never."

He crouched down to pick her up. He put her in the kitchen counter and placed himself between her legs. When he leaned up to kiss her, she hit her head against one of the cabinets and groaned in his mouth.

"Geez. Are you okay?" he asked, stretching out his neck to kiss that side of her head, hitting his own in the process. "OUCH…"

"We are a hot mess," she giggled, wrapping her arms around Barry's neck and tilting her head towards the door. "We need more space."

Without double checking if that was what she meant, he sped them into Caitlin's bedroom and closed the door behind them. After a few more kisses and laughs with her in his arms, Barry gently put Caitlin on the bed and hovered over her. Before he could reach her eye level, she pulled up his shirt off and threw it across the room.

They took things slower than the night before, making out hard as they arched against each other. Barry, who knew this was his first opportunity to show his feelings, wanted to romance her as much as he could before progressing. He intertwined one of his hands with hers, placed them above their heads tenderly and stroked her thigh with the other. Caitlin used her free hand to caress his cheek and kissed a path down his neck.

He didn't notice something was wrong until she joined their mouths together again, and suddenly tried to shake off his hand violently. He raised himself on his arms to check on her.

"Are you o…?"

Then he felt it. It started as slight pain in his teeth that extended to his temples, burning his eye globes.

"Barry, get off me," Caitlin urged. "Barry, get off me. Now"

Barry, who had closed his eyes to draw out the headache, opened them again just to see a horrified, blue-eyed Caitlin pushing him away from her and getting off the bed.

It was then that Barry realized what had just happened.

Brain freeze.

"Hey, hey," Barry said, quickly putting his shirt back on and trying to approach her, but she took one step back for each one he took forward. "Cait…"

Her pupils had changed back to normal, but she seemed petrified, leaning against the chest of drawers. She had covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes were watery and wide open in panic.

"I knew it," she sobbed. "I was right."

"Caitlin, I don't know what's happening, but I'm okay. I'm perfectly fine," he promised, holding his arm out, inviting her to reach him. "Hey…"

"Stay away from me!"

Barry jumped back with both hands in the air. The look on her face him tore him apart. He hadn't seen her so terrified since Killer Frost had almost put an icicle through his heart.

"Did I do this to you?" he asked, mortified.

Instead of answering, she turned around, ran to the bathroom and locked herself up. Barry, who was still recovering from being caught off guard in a considerably intimate moment, decided to grant himself only two seconds of extreme fear before following her.

"Caitlin, please let me in," he begged, leaning against the bathroom door. He then noticed the thermostat on the wall: she had turned the heating up. "What the hell is going on?"

Before he could plead one more time, the bedroom door opened, and Cisco peeked inside.

"What's happening here?" he groaned, rubbing his eyes.

"It's Caitlin," Barry whispered, trying to sum up the situation without giving so much away. "She… took a little bit of my heat by accident and freaked out."

"What? That's not possible, she doesn't do that anymore." Cisco walked in, crossed the room and knocked on the bathroom door. "Caitlin, what are you doing?"

"Leave me alone," she demanded. "No one should be so close to me right now."

"C'mon, it was a little accident. You're exaggerating."

"Cisco, I didn't anticipate this. Please, take Barry to your apartment."

"Caitlin, Barry is okay!" Cisco exchanged a look with his friend just to corroborate that last statement. Barry nodded fervently. "And, as much as I'd like to play Anna and Elsa all night, you're making us very nervous here… whoa!"

Cisco let go of the door handle with a squeal. It was completely frozen.

"Should I vibrate through the door?" Barry susurrated.

Cisco shook his head and exhaled to show Barry the white breath coming out of his mouth, as the cold from inside the bathroom creeped through the space between the door and the floor. He then indicated him to go to the other side of the door.

" _She's_ coming out," he whispered. "You know who."

Barry gesticulated an angry 'are you serious?' with his lips when he saw that Cisco's intention was to ambush Caitlin. He didn't want to accept that Killer Frost was back, even when there were plenty of reasons to believe it.

They didn't have time to discuss it though, because Barry reacted as soon as he saw Caitlin stepping out of the bathroom, with a white streak of hair. He super-sped his shoe laces off, ran behind her and tied her hands together. Cisco shoved her down and immobilized her against the floor with his knee.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, K.F.," Cisco said, easily keeping his prisoner down. "How did you come back?"

Barry, who was watching Caitlin from above, made a high-pitched noise when he noticed her lack of resistance.

"Uh oh," he let out, when she looked up at him, frowning. "I know that look…"

"I know that look too" Cisco yelped, looking down at Caitlin's face. "Not even Killer Frost could make that Twenty-Angry-Mothers look…"

"Are you idiots done manhandling me?" Caitlin huffed, confirming her identity. "How many times do I have to tell you that she's gone?"

"Well, excuse us for doubting it when you've clearly haven't stopped keeping things from us." Cisco offered her a hand to help her get up.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Barry asked, since Cisco hadn't spent enough time with her to notice that.

Cisco pointed at the open bathroom door: the bathtub was full of frozen water.

Caitlin sighed.

"It's not Killer Frost," she insisted. "But there's something seriously wrong with me again"—her eyes glowed — "You guys need to leave."

Barry noticed that Caitlin was staring at him with an even more broken expression than before. He looked in the mirror on the opposite wall and noticed a superficial, red ice burn in the left side of his face. She then looked down at his hand, covered by small, itchy blisters. The adrenaline had probably made him numb to the pain before. He tried to silently appease her before she turned to Cisco, swallowing. No matter how quick those wounds healed, she would beat herself up about it for a long while.

He almost wished it was his fault, so he was the one torturing himself. He knew her: She was doing double duty, hating herself and suffering from the self-loathing.

"Excuse me, are you listening to yourself?" Cisco questioned her. "You accidentally hurt Barry, locked yourself up in the bathroom, froze 62 gallons of water and told us there's something wrong with you. Not to mention it feels like freaking Arendelle in here. Sure, I'll be out in a minute."

"It's for your own good," Caitlin insisted. Barry noticed that layer of frost had covered her eyelashes and nose, and another streak of white hair had formed a few inches from the other. "Please, leave."

"No. No until we get an explanation."

"No touching!" She frantically pulled her sleeves down to cover her hands when Cisco stretched his arm towards her. "Guys, I…"

Caitlin groaned in frustration and rubbed her face with her hands.

"It's the heat…" she started, waving her hands in surrender. "My powers… they work by turning heat into ice projection. As you already know, I recharge them with coffee, hot baths, the steam room in STAR Labs… but lately the craving has grown stronger and those methods are not enough. I need _more_. Without the proper amount, my powers go out of whack and I can't control them or regulate my own body temperature, which right now is dropping and dropping… The thing is, as long as I am here, the cold wave around me will be enough to kill anyone near." She alternated her look between Cisco then Barry. "That's why you guys need to leave."

"What do you mean 'as long as I'm here'?" Barry asked, ignoring the rest.

"Barry…" Caitlin tried, but she was interrupted.

"What did you mean, Caitlin?"

"Aren't you guys listening to me?" Caitlin backed off from them and cornered herself against her bedroom door. Another layer of frost had appeared on her upper lip. "You'll die from hypothermia if you stay here."

"And so will you," Cisco interfered, pointing an accusing, trembling finger at her. "Of course! The super healing Killer Frost provided repaired cold tissue. Without it, your body won't be able to resist that much cold… and you'll die."

At a bearable temperature, Barry would've panicked, but the cold was preventing him from thinking clearly and he knew they had to react fast. He whooshed to Caitlin's side and grabbed her by the arm.

"I'll take you to STAR Labs," he told her, calmly. "We'll figure something out."

"I tried everything, and I don't have that much time," Caitlin said, her voice breaking on the last syllable. "There's nothing in STAR Labs that can help me."

"Cisco?"

Cisco was walking around the room frantically, pulling his own hair.

"She's right, we don't have anything that can provide that type of energy," he said, desperately. "We can bring her some wild animal she can suck the life out, like the Twilight vampires did…"

"It won't be enough," Caitlin interrupted, sitting on the floor and pulling her knees against her chest. Barry kneeled next to her. "There's nothing you guys can do. I'm sorry."

Barry, who had been oddly focused the whole time, knew exactly what he had to do. Caitlin, too weak to shove him away, shook her head lightly when he got closer to her.

"Take my heat," he said, determined.

"No," Caitlin protested, trembling and battling to keep her eyes open. "No way."

"You just need a little bit. It will buy us some time to find a way of saving you. Please."

"No! What if I can't stop?"

"I trust you." Barry lifted her chin up with his fingers, ignoring of the burning pain he felt from the skin-to-skin contact. "Do you trust me?"

"Dude, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Cisco said, behind him. "We can still come up with something that will keep us all alive."

"You're not gonna kill me," Barry continued, ignoring him. He stroked her cheek with his hand and clenched his jaw. It was like touching dry ice. "Look at me." She looked up at him and sobbed, although it was impossible to produce tears. "You're gonna start asking for help, okay?"

"Not this kind of help," Caitlin whispered weakly. "I'm not watching you guys die."

She closed her eyes and stopped moving. Barry, losing his last shred of calm, tried to shake her back into conscience.

"No, no, no!" he shouted, desperately. "Wake up!"

"Oh, my God," Cisco exclaimed, kneeling next to him and pointing at Caitlin's eye. It was twitching. "She's holding her breath!"

"Caitlin, don't be ridiculous!"

Knowing there was no way to convince her, he leaned his face down to proceed with his original plan, but Caitlin opened her arms and released a cold wind that sent him flying a one meter away from her. He got up at the same time she did and tried pathetically tried to catch her, being easily avoided. Barry suspected that the only reason why Cisco and him were still alive was their meta genes, because the temperature was already low enough to neutralize his superspeed.

"Caitlin," Barry grunted, starting to lose his patience. "We're trying to save your life."

"My life is ruined anyway," she said, with a chilling chuckle. Her skin was dangerously pale.

She kept on moving clumsily around the room, trying to keep enough distance between them. Her mistake was being too focused on avoiding Barry. Cisco sneaked behind her, threw a wave of energy and trapped her against the wall.

"Now!" he yelled.

Barry ran to Caitlin, pulled her face to him and covered her lips with his, trying to breath in her mouth. She put up a good fight at first before the instinct for self-preservation triumphed and she relaxed her grip on his arms.

Maybe he was being biased considering the person involved, but Barry had already had his life force sucked out of his body by time wraiths once and this wasn't feeling remotely as bad as that.

Also, he wasn't cold. Where was the cold?

It didn't take him long to figure it out: just like a few hours before, big amounts of energy coming from different parts of his body reunited in his chest. Barry, basing on a hunch, held them back as much as he could and then redirected them to his lips. An electric shock separated him from Caitlin and sent him to the floor.

"IT WORKED!" Cisco screamed, stopping Caitlin from falling to the floor. "It worked. Dammit, Caitlin." He kneeled down with her in his arms. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she coughed. The white streaks in her hair had disappeared and the frost has melted on her face. "I'm fine."

"Frost lives." He shared a smile with Barry and then looked down at her. "If you weren't my doctor, I'd be sending you all my cardiology bills."

Barry heard the central heating turn back on and the cold wave slowly started dissipating.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, helping Caitlin get up and displaying his most relieved smile.

"Sweaty," she replied, drying her face with her sleeve. "Did you know that would happen?"

"Of course I did." He shrugged and let out a loud laugh. Maybe too loud. "We talked about my energy excess today, remember? I knew you'd absorb it."

"You're a terrible liar." She smiled at him with infinite gratitude. "Thank you."

"Anytime."

Cisco, who had been mumbling uncompressible words, walked in circles around Caitlin's room.

"Eureka!" he announced. "I just had the best and most obvious idea!" He smiled, apparently expecting his friends to share his happiness. "I need to go."

"Cisco, the whole point of coming here was not being at STAR Labs and staying together," Barry told him. "We just went through something pretty intense. Caitlin needs some rest. We can get there early tomorrow, ask Peters some questions and get rid of Scudder…"

"You stay with Caitlin. I'll use my panic button if I need it."

"Cisco…"

"Barry, I'll call you. No matter how hard you're sleeping, my panic button is the loudest one. I just can't let this one slip."

Barry rolled his eyes, but didn't try to persuade him. His friend crouched down in front of Caitlin, who was sitting in the edge of her bed.

"I promise you I won't sleep until we find a solution," Cisco reassured her. "I don't want you to ever say your life is ruined again."

"Okay," Caitlin said, with her fists firm against her knees, probably still afraid of showing physical affection. "Thank you."

Cisco nodded, waved his hand and created a little portal.

"Beam me up, Scotty," he quoted and, with a snap of his fingers, he disappeared along with the portal.

As soon as they were left alone, Barry sat next to Caitlin and buried his face in the space between her neck and shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Caitlin muttered.

"For what?" Barry asked, his voice muffled against her skin. "For scaring us? For making it hard for us to save you?"

"For putting you in danger."

"At least that wasn't on purpose."

Caitlin grabbed the back of his head gently and pulled him away from her. Her glance then wandered from there to Barry's face, and he knew from her gloomy expression that his words had hurt her… or she was about to say something he wouldn't like.

"I think… I think that the heat craving grew stronger because of what happened between us," she explained. "I had my suspicions, but… I was good last night, and I really thought things would be normal from now on… turns out I was wrong."

"You were cold as soon as you stepped out of the shower," Barry remembered.

"Yeah. I always managed to restrain myself, prevent my body from learning how it felt to feed on natural heat… Now, not only the craving is stronger… the heat I absorb runs out faster."

"That's why you were pushing me away."

"And then put you in danger, thinking I had everything under control. I'm sorry."

"We'll find a way, Caitlin. We'll find a way."

Would they, though? What if Cisco's plan didn't work?

Barry had momentarily wished all that was his fault, so Caitlin didn't feel so bad about it. Turns out, it was. Each one the problems Caitlin's powers have caused were his fault. Two years later, the girl he was in love with was still suffering from the consequences of Flashpoint. That was the devastating truth, the elephant in the room, the real reason why he felt so insecure around her.

He didn't deserve her.

"Barry, whatever we are doing here… it has to stop," Caitlin said, in a heartbreaking, apologetic tone. "It has to stop now that there are no strong feelings involved."

' _No strong feelings involved'. She can't be serious,_ Barry thought. His mind was having so much trouble processing her words that there was no room to elaborate some of his own.

"…Is that okay?" she asked, as the last part of a sentence Barry didn't hear. "Friends?"

 _Of course it's not okay, say something! Tell her you'll wait for her._

"You're right," he let out. _What the hell are you doing?! This self-sabotage again?_ "I just want to make things easy for you. Don't worry about me."

"I'm sorry. I can't pretend I can have a normal relationship. You and I work together..."

"I understand. Do you want to sleep?"

Caitlin gave him a confused look. She was whether disconcerted or a little offended that he had given up so fast. It was like he was in autopilot, shielding himself from anything that could give him hope for a future with her. For now, he knew he had to let go.

"I don't think I can," she answered, after the pause. "I… I don't wanna be alone."

"You won't be," Barry assured, trying to keep his tone platonic. "I'll stay here with you."

"I've been doing some math in my head and I think I have around 24 hours of heat… but I don't think it's safe that we..."

Barry disappeared from her side, came back and spun her around at superspeed. She found herself wrapped in a blanket.

"I call it the Cait Roll," he grinned. "See? We don't need to touch each other. Come here."

Caitlin gave him a wide, thankful, heart-melting smile. Barry scooted Caitlin up on the bed until they reached the headboard. He then placed one of the tiny cushions on his shoulder, wordlessly telling her she could rest her head there. Contrary to what she believed, she fell asleep almost instantaneously.

* * *

As good as it felt to have Caitlin wrapped in his arms again, Barry couldn't sleep. He was devastated. Pretending that he was okay with being just friends again was one thing… but worrying about her future, a future he had jeopardized, was simply excruciating. What was he going to do?

Around 3 AM, his cellphone started vibrating on the night stand. He wriggled away from Caitlin carefully, sat in the edge of the bed and picked up.

"Barry, I need you here," Cisco prompted, before he could even say 'hello'. "Just five minutes."

His friend hung up on him without he could say yes or no. Barry got off the bed slowly. Even though he could feel that Caitlin had fallen into a deep sleep, he didn't want her to wake up alone in the dark, so he had to leave immediately.

He tiptoed to the bedroom door, closed it behind him and ran to STAR Labs, appearing in Cisco's workshop.

"Tadaaaa!" Cisco exclaimed, as soon as he saw him, both of his arms pointing at a some kind of cubicle that wasn't there the day before.

"What is that?" Barry asked, following the cables and realizing that the machine was wired to another artefact he knew very well.

The treadmill.


	3. Chapter 3

Barry stared at his phone, ringing on his desk for the third time in a row, but didn't leave the Rubik cube he was trying to solve at normal speed.

When the ringing finally stopped, a short vibration followed. Barry finally picked it up from the desk and read the notification on the screen, without opening the message.

 _From: Cisco Ramon_

" _911"_

Barry couldn't help but react to those three numbers with anxiety. He took a deep breath, sat back in his chair and tapped into the speedforce surrounding him, like he was about to start running.

Once the lightning started coursing through his eyes, a brief image flashed across his mind: Caitlin's apartment. Cisco had his phone in his hands, and shrugged when Caitlin gave him a disappointed look from the other side of the kitchen table.

"Nice try," Barry whispered, feeling something catch in his throat.

He looked through his lab window, feeling like a prisoner. Two weeks had passed since the incident at Caitlin's apartment. Two weeks since he had started avoiding his friends. At first, he would check on Cisco and the lab twice a day but, once he fixed the police radio in his CCPD lab, he stopped bothering with the slickness and started taking care of minor crimes by himself, ignoring Cisco's words in his ear or simply turning off the comms every time. Barry kept on telling himself that, as soon as they had a real emergency, he would be back with him and Caitlin in a heartbeat. For now, he needed some time alone.

That didn't stop him from feeling like the worst person in the multiverse, though.

His speedforce connection with Caitlin was strong enough to know that she wasn't exactly affected, just worried. And, as much as Barry wanted to call out Cisco on sending a fake emergency text and tell him that now he could 'vibe' him whenever he was with Caitlin, he knew he couldn't. He had to react to the text. Otherwise, they'd think he didn't care.

"What… happened? I… charged… the machine… last night" he mumbled, as he typed the same words on his phone. "How is… she… doing…btw?"

Barry tapped 'send" and, before he could leave the phone down, a short reply popped up, followed by three more. It was obvious that Cisco wanted to catch his attention before he could start ignoring him again.

 _From: Cisco Ramon_

" _Not so much. What's up with you?!"_

" _Yeah, we noticed."_

" _But she hand't used that charge yet!"_

" _It's been three days since the last one; can you believe it?!"_

" _Hey, talk to us."_

"He doesn't know," Barry assumed, returning to his Rubik cube.

He had thought that Cisco would start asking questions about his behavior, and maybe Caitlin would end up telling him what was going on between them. And he was wrong: Caitlin had normally texted him every day since he was gone, so she probably didn't think she was the reason of his absence, and Barry couldn't blame her. He played tough guy when she told him they shouldn't give their potential relationship a shot, and now they were back to square one. Even if Caitlin really liked him, she had now spent two weeks thinking he was over it.

On the other hand, the fact that one of his charges had lasted three days was a reason to smile. She was going to be okay.

 **2 WEEKS AGO**

 _Barry took Caitlin to the Speed Lab early in the morning. Cisco was there waiting for them, standing in front of his most recent invention: a big, transparent cubicle, with cables popping from the sides._

" _Finally!" Cisco exclaimed, jumping. "I've had three expressos, so please try to keep up with the explanation."_

 _Caitlin, who had just woken up and was still wrapped in a blanket, nodded with half lidded eyes._

" _Caitlin, just like you said yesterday, the faster Barry got, the more energy he started generating," Cisco explained, moving his hands and walking around the cubicle. "You're the opposite: you don't generate energy, you feed on energy and we should've guessed that you'd start needing more now that you're more powerful."_

 _Caitlin's eyes followed the wires attached to Cisco's machine and noticed they ended in Barry's treadmill._

" _I don't need to explain the thermodynamics, just that Barry has some extra energy that we shouldn't waste," the mechanic continued, smiling widely when he saw that Caitlin was starting to understand. "Every time you want to recharge your powers, all you need to do is come down here and lock yourself in the Frost Keeper for a few seconds. It'd be great if you didn't wait for your body to start giving out, you know," he scolded her, and she nodded vigorously. "I did the math already, basing on the average human body temperature, Barry's body temperature and the energy he generates when he runs. We used these buttons"_ — _He pointed at a metallic plate on the side of the door_ — _"to establish the perfect time and temperature. Don't try to readjust it by yourself. This is the exact amount we are sure that won't kill you. But, if you create resistance to it, please tell me as soon as you can."_

" _You've been up all night?" Caitlin asked, getting closer to her friend. "Cisco, I… I don't know what to say."_

" _Don't thank me. Barry ran a thousand kilometers to charge it… and also risked his life," Cisco said, pointing at Barry, who smiled when Caitlin turned to him. "You fed on his last bit of extra energy last night. The idiot didn't know that, though. He could've died in normal conditions. But now, with this, he can give you as much as you need without draining out."_

 _Barry, who had been running in his Flash suit, took off his mask to talk to her._

" _What happened to you…" He started, trying to look at her as platonically as he could. "That won't happen again. I'll charge it every day."_

 _Barry and Cisco waited for Caitlin to compose. It was obvious that she was trying to thank them without choking up._

" _Do you wanna try it now?" Cisco suggested, excitedly. "We're not sure of how long a charge will last, hopefully more than one day…Now that we know that not even Barry could survive your cold kiss in normal conditions, I'd also advice you not to go on any hot dates yet…"_

 _Barry kept his poker face when Caitlin's eyebrows shot up. They both avoided looking at each other directly._

 **TODAY**

"Are you listening to me?" Joe asked, snapping his fingers.

"What? Ough!" Barry exclaimed. He had reacted so fast that his knee had hit the base of the desk. "Where did you come from?"

"I just walked in. You even said hi."

"Did I?"

Joe looked down at Barry's phone screen, lighten up by three more unattended notifications. He then nodded twice, like he was deciding whether to say something or not.

"The last time you spent twenty hours in this lab was the day before you were struck by lightning," Joe said, sitting on the edge of the desk. "And this" —He placed his finger between Barry's eyebrows— "is a look I know very well, but I hadn't seen in a while. Girl trouble?"

Barry sighed and left the unsolved Rubik cube back on his desk. While he wanted to respect Caitlin's decision, he knew that he needed to talk to someone that wasn't her. Otherwise, the sadness would drive him crazy. He had tried to distract himself, tracking down Roger Peters, the meta who could phase through walls, since he had escaped the pipeline nine days ago, but there was no sign of him. It was like he had vanished.

"Barry," Joe insisted. "You haven't talked to me in a while. I might not be your father in law anymore… but I'm still your father." He shrugged. "You can still tell me everything. Come on, shoot."

"I…I had dinner with someone at my place two weeks ago," Barry started, immediately. Although he didn't feel like revealing that someone's identity yet. "We watched a documentary in my couch… the tension between us was palpable and we got… carried away. I thought we had connected… but she shut me out. When she told me that we shouldn't be together, I paralyzed. I couldn't tell her how I really felt. Even the speedforce is behaving funny around me since then. My body wants to be close to her, so I constantly feel all this energy pulling me to start STAR Labs…"

Barry stopped himself right there, with his mouth open, like it was possible to prevent those last words from traveling to Joe's ears. Turns out, it wasn't. The cop's eyes opened wide.

"Caitlin?!" Joe exclaimed, getting off the desk with a little jump. "YOU? AND CAITLIN?!"

"Oh God, I can't keep a secret," Barry acknowledged, putting his hands in the back of his neck.

"Oh my God."

Joe walked around the lab and, once he was back in front of Barry's desk, he started laughing hysterically.

"What? What's so funny?" Barry asked, irritated. "For real?" His hurt expression just seemed to amuse Joe even more. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's just…" Joe tried to apologize, breathing in and out. "Caitlin?" Barry nodded impatiently. "Caitlin and… you?"

"What? You think I'm not enough?"

"I didn't say that. It's just… you two seem too different."

Barry felt a little guilty for reacting the way he did. He probably had expected Joe's approval right away.

"Now that you know who she is, I can tell you more," Barry said. "I should probably start over."

"Alright," Joe agreed.

Barry told Joe everything that had happened between him and Caitlin two weeks before, including the heat problem and the fact he hadn't stepped foot in STAR Labs ever since.

"I lost my mind," Barry concluded, once he finished the story. "These thoughts and feelings… felt so right at the beginning. I mean, Caitlin was there when I needed her the most: All those long nights at the lab talking, the Friday nights out that helped me through the divorce, how she makes things easy, but always speaks her mind… I always kind of knew I could fall for her, and obviously shielded myself from that… but that night changed everything. I lost my mind."

"Are you sure that you _just_ lost your mind?" Joe inquired.

"What do you mean?"

"It means that having a deep love for someone that suddenly turns into something more is… normal. You've always had those feelings, they were just… not romantic until now."

As much as Barry appreciated Joe's support, he couldn't put on a more optimistic expression. Exploring his feelings wouldn't change anything anyway.

"Tell me… why are you sitting here like a singularity had killed a second husband or she had turned to the dark side again?" The cop pushed. "Why are you hiding? I thought the machine was helping her."

"Because I'm the reason those things happened," Barry snapped, stretching his arm towards the window. "She was ready to die two weeks ago, thinking her life was doomed forever by the powers. The powers I gave her by traveling back in time, not so long after failing to save her husband and letting a sociopath get close to her. I brought nothing but pain to her life, and now I'm gonna make her fall in love with me?" He coughed when his voice turned raspy from the frustration had just let out. "What if I screw up? What if I die?"

"So, you won't say anything." Joe gave him a stunned look. "You're gonna keep this to yourself and wait one, two, three or maybe five years to make up your mind, just because you think you know what she thinks. You're gonna let someone else beat you to it, again."

"Joe…"

"Both Cisco and Caitlin gave up their personal lives to join your crusade, Barry. They don't hold you accountable for anything. Your death would make an impact, no matter what. And you've had plenty to learn from relationships already… why would you screw up? Sometimes, things don't work out. Those are the risks you take."

Barry noticed Joe's neutrality crack for a second. There was no doubt that he didn't blame him for divorcing Iris, but it seemed like he wasn't exactly in love with the idea of seeing him interested in someone else.

"Thank you for the advice," Barry answered, since it was too soon to promise a decision. "I know this must be hard for you."

"A little bit. Yes," his adoptive father admitted.

"I think Iris is still mad at me."

"That's funny, she…" Joe pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed him the screen. "… said the exact same thing about you."

"She's the one who replies with one-word messages."

Joe let out a long sigh.

"I shouldn't be the one telling you this, but I think it could help you decide how to proceed," the man teased. Barry swallowed. "Iris… met someone in France. It's serious, Barry. Now, how do you feel about that?"

Opposite to what he thought, Barry had to search every corner of his being to find any sign of annoyance or pain, only to realize that the guilt he had felt for getting over his ex-wife was rapidly fading away.

"That's awesome," he smirked, concluding the scan to his own heart. "I am glad that she 'won' the break up."

Joe arched his eyebrows, probably trying to hide his disappointment.

"Call her. She's afraid of telling you," he encouraged him. "And go tell Caitlin about all that speedforce cheesiness. She'll probably be happier to hear it than me."

Barry nodded and, once Joe was out of the lab, he grabbed his phone and texted Cisco, asking him if he wanted to go out for a drink on Friday.

* * *

That night, Barry waited until nine to run to Caitlin's apartment. He had calmly walked through the hallway once he stepped out of the elevator, because he didn't want to announce his arrival and give up an opportunity to chicken out if he needed to.

He walked from one side to the other in front of the door, practicing what he wanted to say. His greatest motivation to be there was seeing Caitlin, because he didn't feel ready for what he was about to do. Images of their night together kept on flashing across his mind, like his brain was trying to help him analyze the things he had in his favor.

 **2 WEEKS AND 1 DAY AGO.**

 _Barry tried to pass the big bowl of popcorn to Caitlin, before realizing she was already nodding off in the other side of the couch. With a devilish smile, he sat back and threw a little piece of corn at her face._

" _I saw you," she grunted, rubbing her eyes. Barry started giggling. "What time is it?"_

" _Eleven. You only slept five minutes of this one," Barry said, pausing the documentary and leaving the bowl on the table in front of them. "Do you want to watch a movie now?"_

" _Actually, I should get going."_

" _Oh." Barry felt a strong and unfamiliar wave of disappointment hit him. "Do you want a ride home?_

 _Caitlin straightened her skirt over her thighs and grabbed her phone from the arm of the couch._

" _I'll call an Uber," she told him, typing something on the screen._

" _No way!" Barry exclaimed, shooting his arm out at superspeed and taking the phone from her hands. "I'll take you."_

" _I don't like how Cisco and you take me everywhere..."_

" _It takes me one second. C'mon."_

" _You asked me if I wanted a ride and I said no. Give me the phone."_

" _No."_

 _Caitlin, half annoyed, half amused, scooted closer to him to ask nicely, but he kept the phone out of her reach._

" _Barry, I don't have time for this," she complained, leaning against his right shoulder with her arms. "I have to wake up really early tomorrow…"_

" _Nah, you don't," Barry smirked, grabbing one of her wrists._

" _Yes, I do. I have a lot to do."_

" _I'm your boss and I say you don't."_

" _How convenient."_

 _Barry kept laughing at her obvious impatience. Caitlin seemed serious about not wanting him to take her home and he didn't want her to get mad, but her pouty face was hard to take seriously. However, he got distracted trying to think of something to get her to stay a little longer, and that was when she shoved him down, making his back hit the arm of the couch._

" _Give me… the… phone," Caitlin gasped, climbing his body until she reached the arm he had up._

" _Okay, okay. You win, you win," Barry let out, in pain, when she dug her elbow in his ribs. "Geez, have you been lifting? You're strong."_

 _Barry tried to push his legs to the side right when she tried to get off him, accidentally making her lose her balance and fall flat against his chest._

" _Sorry," Caitlin apologized, trying to sit up. She almost fell again when she noticed that she was now straddling Barry. "Sorry!"_

 _Barry grinned awkwardly. He knew he was letting the moment extend without helping her, but Caitlin's look on him was stopping him from separating. It seemed like he wasn't the only one who had suddenly frozen in that position._

" _Why don't you want me to take you home?" He asked, without trying to escape the grip of her legs. "The truth."_

" _Because I like slow," Caitlin said, shrugging. "I like to feel that things take time and I like being stuck in traffic and think about my life..."_

 _Barry looked up at her, speechless. Just like every time Caitlin had ever spoken her mind about something, she had taken him by surprise with her deepness._

" _Fair enough," he agreed, with a smile. "Good things take time."_

 _In an attempt to do something to release some tension, he removed a lock of hair from her face with his hand, earning a smile from her. Noticing that she didn't look uncomfortable anymore, he took another one and tucked it behind her ear._

" _Barry, I have to go," she susurrated, without trying to move, like she needed his permission first._

 _(It took reminiscing the firm, and yet gentle tone she used in that short sentence for Barry to realize that Caitlin had somehow sensed where the emptiness and loneliness could take them to. Even before he did.)_

 _Without listening, he lifted two fingers and placed them on her lips. He was suddenly curious about the fact she hadn't put on lipstick that day._

 _Caitlin seemed paralyzed. Her eyes wandered around the room, like she didn't know where to look._

" _Cait," Barry let out, like wanting to make sure she was still there._

" _What?" She asked._

" _This might sound corny, but… you're so beautiful."_

 _Her eyes seemed to want to open wide for a second, but her frown stopped them from doing so._

" _Thank you for noticing," Caitlin snapped, slapping his hand away from her face. "Can I go now?"_

" _Wh… what?"_

 _Caitlin tried to get off him one more time, but he grabbed her by the waist._

" _What's that supposed to mean?" Barry asked, serious. He had some ideas in the back of his mind._

" _Let me go," she ordered, suddenly angry._

" _No. What did you mean?"_

" _Nothing, Barry."_

" _You're upset."_

" _I'm not upset!"_

 _He tried to reach her cheek to comfort her, but caught him halfway. Barry felt his heartbeat in his ears as she kept his wrist firmly wrapped in her hand. She clenched her jaw and gave him_ that _look…that look that always made him suspect she held more power that she allowed herself to show._

 _Barry tried to ask her to let go of him with his eyes, because she was starting to scare him, and some cold was already creeping through his skin, but she held him tighter for a few more seconds… and then prisoned his hand against the cushions. She seemed focused and interested on the movement of his pupils, like she was trying to catch him in a lie. He now wanted to ask her what was exactly going on but, for some reason, waking her up from that trance was the last thing he wanted to do. She then leaned down and (maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose) crashed his hips with hers. He had to drown a groan and think about the grossest crime scenes he had ever witnessed, before his friend noticed the obvious physical reaction._

 _Her free hand went to the left side of his chest, where she tugged down the collar of his shirt and started tapping the skin with her fingers rhythmically. He swallowed and tried to breath quietly through his nose, until she leaned even closer and he forgot how to breath at all._

" _Are you measuring my heart rate?" He inquired, unable to stand the silence any longer._

" _Uhm… yeah," she answered, her nose almost touching his. Barry thought it was funny she had blushed at that simple question, considering the situation they were in. "I just… wanted to make sure."_

 _Barry implicitly knew what the doctor meant as soon as she said it: she was looking for the physical reactions he had been trying to hide._

 _That was the sign he had been waiting for._

 _Mustering up enough courage, Barry sat up and wrapped an arm around her back, locking their upper bodies together. She let go of his hand and pressed both of hers to his cheeks, looking down at him with half closed eyes._

" _I… I..." Barry stuttered, pathetically, lowering his hands to her thighs. At that point, it was impossible that she hadn't already noticed certain bulge in his pants. "It's okay if you want to stop…"_

 _Caitlin's response left him breathless: instead of breaking the spell with an answer, she leaned her head down and ghosted her lips over his. He let out a sigh and closed his eyes, unable to meet her intense gaze, and rose his hand up her thighs, under the skirt. Apparently taken by surprise, she bit down his lower lip, making him shudder. By instinct, he grinded his hips against hers and she surprised him with a gasp. Before Caitlin could react, he repeated the move, altering their breaths enough to interrupt the almost-kiss._

" _Maybe we shouldn't…" Barry breathed out, although he had just lowered his head to kiss her neck._

" _Maybe," she whimpered, throwing her head back as he started kissing the base of her jaw. She then raised her arms to let him pull her shirt off her body and reached between them to do the same with his. Once she snaked her arms around his neck, they both reacted to the skin-to-skin contact with more strangled noises. "Barry…"_

 _Caitlin swallowed her words when Barry pulled her head down with his hand to join their lips together. They started with a lingering, gentle peck to give themselves some time to process their first kiss. But then his tongue parted her lips, her fingers tangled in his hair and things got more heated. Barry rolled her onto her back, and felt her nails digging in his back as he kissed her slow and deep._

 _He remembered the heat so vividly that he could've even sworn that there was white steam surrounded them the whole time._

 **TODAY**

"This is so not the best time to think about that," Barry whispered, stopping his train of thought and fanning himself with his hand. He didn't want Caitlin to see a red-faced idiot when she opened the door. "Okay…"

Although the experience had been obviously tender and passionate, with caresses that came from a deep love between teammates, Barry hadn't found the meaning he was looking for. He needed something, a different sign, to make sure Caitlin's feelings existed and he wasn't making a huge mistake.

Suddenly, something else flashed across his mind. He knew that they had done it in the couch and he had carried her to his bed after that, but his fast brain, constantly regenerating, seemed to think there was more.

 **ALSO THAT NIGHT**

 _The only light in Barry's room came from the street. A thin silhouette that didn't belong to him abandoned the bed and started tiptoeing towards the bedroom door._

 _(Barry rolled his eyes when he realized it was Caitlin in his button up shirt, trying to sneak out.)_

 _Caitlin was a few inches away from the exit when a strangled moan made her stop in her tracks. She turned to the bed, where Barry saw himself writhing and sobbing._

 _He didn't remember the nightmare but, considering the thick layer of sweat covering his body, it was clearly an awful one._

 _Surprisingly, Caitlin aborted her plan and climbed back onto the bed quickly._

" _Hey," she whispered, sliding to Barry's side. "Barry, wake up."_

 _She put her palm on the left side of his chest and started rubbing the skin, like she was trying to massage his heart. After a few more whispered words in his ear, he opened his eyes and looked around, completely disoriented._

" _Hi there," Caitlin said, sweetly. "That must've been some dream."_

 _Barry cracked a sleepy smile when he recognized her and turned to his side to face her, putting his arm around her waist._

" _Hey, you," he panted out. "You smell so good. Have you always smelled this good?"_

 _Caitlin laughed._

" _I guess so," she answered. "Or it's just my MHC."_

" _Your what now?"_

" _Histocompatibility complex… a group of molecules that influences your body odor and your mating preferences. Yours is probably compatible with mine since we've already…" She gestured with her index fingers "… mated."_

 _Barry laughed under his breath._

" _You're adorable," he said, placing a kiss between her eyes._

" _Do you wanna tell me about your dream?" Caitlin asked, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away some sweat from his face._

" _I don't remember it."_

" _Okay, go back to sleep."_

 _Once Barry closed his eyes, Caitlin leaned forward to kiss him softly on the lips and abruptly pulled away when he let out a loud snore._

" _Well, thank God you didn't do that earlier," she giggled, snuggling against him and closing her own eyes._

 **TODAY**

Present Barry found himself smiling like an idiot.

"She didn't leave me," he sighed, putting his hands behind his head. "Why didn't I remember that? God, I have to nail this."

He positioned himself in front of the door, thinking about the most romantic thing that didn't require so much planning.

"I could bring her a flashmob… haha, that's funny," he grinned, at his own joke. "Focus… Yeah, I can do a flashmob. I could bring some people later…" He cleared his throat and started singing as low as he could to practice. " _There is a wait so long… you'll never wait so loooong… here comes your man…_ "

Barry stopped singing and shook his head, impatient. That song sounded kind of entitled.

"I'm good, I still got it…" He reassured himself. After thinking harder, he practiced another one and even added hand gestures. " _Stranded at the drive in, branded a fool… what will they say Monday at school? …Oh, San…_ That's not even her name!"

He grabbed his head in frustration. Caitlin was not going to get that stupid Grease reference. Not because she wasn't smart, but because he wasn't even sure the karaoke, that inadvertent date they had, had even happened after Flashpoint. He had no idea of how to make his love confession perfect and the fact she probably wouldn't want something so elaborated made him even more insecure. If she was really expecting something from him, it was probably not so much. But, what was it?

"This was a bad idea," he decided, backing off from the door and turning around to start walking away. "This was a terrible, terrible…"

"What was a bad idea?"

Barry stopped in his tracks and turned around very slowly.

Caitlin was staring at him from the front door. It seemed like she hadn't left the apartment that day: she was wearing sweatpants and long t-shirt, and her hair wasn't done.

"How long have you been there?" Barry inquired, alarmed.

"Just now. I saw you leaving in my security cameras and ran," she explained, confused.

"Right, that's… all that happened." Barry clapped once with his hands in relief. "I-I-I just wanted to check on you. You… you seem good, so I'm gonna leave now…"

"Barry Allen."

A chill went down his spine when he heard his name pronounced with such authoritarian tone. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, with his back still facing her.

"Get back here, right now," Caitlin ordered.

Barry sped to the door and stopped in front of her, blowing her hair back.

"Yes, ma'am," he sighed.

"Come in," she demanded, holding the door for him and closing it behind her once he got inside.

Barry didn't move far from the door, still acting like he wasn't planning to stay long. Caitlin approached him with an unreadable expression upon her face. Even though he saw her hand lifting in slow motion, he didn't guess what she was going to do until her fist hit his shoulder with full force.

"AGH! What the…?" he exclaimed, putting a hand over his arm and giving her a judgmental look. "What was that for?"

"Where the hell have you been?!" she asked, heatedly. "Do you have any idea of how worried I've been?"

"Actually, I have a pretty good idea," Barry intervened, feeling terribly guilty about the time he had slightly enjoyed sensing her worries, while passing the STAR Labs building on his way to stop a robbery.

"You know? Cisco vibed you the first week, after you avoided him twice at your apartment and the CCPD! We thought you were kidnapped somewhere and someone else was wearing your face or something… Like it was impossible!" She added in her defense, because Barry had cringed at the last sentence. "Then he saw you just brooding in your lab. I don't know what's going on, I told him we should give you some space… but…"

"You're mad at me anyway."

"Yes, I am."

Barry had a knack for automatically taking the blame whenever a woman got demanding with him, just to avoid trouble. With Caitlin, it wasn't that easy. It usually took a lot for her to admit someone had hurt her. Feeling bad about making her feel _that_ bad was unavoidable.

"You look good," he commented, noticing some blush on her cheeks. He had meant to apologize, but that had come out instead. "I like your straight hair, you look really pretty."

"No excuse. I see," Caitlin pointed out, bitterly.

"Excuse? No. Explanation? Yes."

"Okay."

Barry stepped into the living room, followed by her. Once he had Caitlin in front of him again, his lips curved into an unintended smile. Her eyes were surprisingly soft, and he could sense a feeling of comfort surrounding her.

She was happy to see him.

"What's so funny?" Caitlin questioned, trying so hard to keep her frown that Barry had to bite his lip to stop his smile from expanding.

"Nothing," he answered, unable to feel guilty about keeping that little secret from her this time. "I'll go straight to the point."

Caitlin nodded and waved her hand to encourage him.

"Caitlin, we've been in peace for over a year now… and the fact your powers are causing trouble again made me realize that every bad thing that has happened to you since I know you has been my fault," Barry started, noticing her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "Ronnie, Zoom, the powers…"

"Wha…? We've been through this already," she interrupted him, tiredly. "Yes, these powers come with some consequences, but we fixed it, thanks to you and Cisco. And I don't seem to be creating resistance anymore."

"Yeah, and that's great. But you almost died…"

"And _you_ saved me..."

"Yeah, this time. What about the time you really died? What about all the times a psychopath took you? What about…?"

Caitlin sighed and rubbed her face with her hands.

"Barry… Barry!" she stopped him, when he tried to start talking again. "Where is this ancient regret coming from? Some of those times you mention… you were caught up on something else… something more important, and I get it. You can't focus on everyone. And you can't save everyone."

"I just…" Barry tried again, barely looking at her. It seemed like every time he tried to look up, a little more of pain surfaced. "You've done everything by yourself."

"So? Did you think that not speaking to me would fix things I already forgave you for?"

"No, but…"

"You just want me to be mad at you, don't you?"

Barry stared blankly at the floor. Damn, she was good.

"Look, I knew my reasons would sound stupid," he said, shrugging. "But everything will make more sense once I tell you something. That's why I'm here, actually."

"Oh," Caitlin let out, with genuine curiosity. "Okay."

Barry took a deep breath. But, once he saw Caitlin standing in front of him waiting for whatever he had to say, he realized he had nothing planned. He had spent all his time outside the apartment thinking about an original way, but nothing had prepared him to face her just like this. Instead, he couldn't help focusing on what she had said about him getting 'caught up on other things'. Even though Cisco, Caitlin and Barry were closer than ever, that bond still felt strangely recent for people that had known each other for five years.

And that was because he had been _**really**_ caught up on other things. His marriage had taken over his life and destroyed it. And, now that he had just started to rebuild it, he was expecting Caitlin to welcome him with open arms. Sure, he had the right to want to be happy, but it still felt like he was making advances without earning it. Joe's advice had encouraged him, but that hadn't been enough to stop him from feeling unworthy.

"Are you okay?" Caitlin asked, suddenly. "You're… super pale."

"My…" he tried to say, but his throat seemed to be closing up. "I can't…"

Barry felt his heart throbbing violently and painfully in his chest, like it was fighting to escape his ribcage. His hands started shaking and his knees felt like they were made of jelly. He tried to take deep breaths, but all his attempts seemed to be blocked by an invisible obstacle between his mouth and his larynx.

"I can't breathe," he hissed, feeling cold sweat on his face and neck.

"Oh, no!" Caitlin exclaimed, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him until he sat on the couch. "Barry, try to inhale with your diaphragm, not with your chest…"

"Wha…?"

"It's a panic attack!"

"Are you kidding me?!"

"No! Shut up and breath! Inhale!" She kneeled on the couch and watched his stomach come out as he managed to do what she said. "Count to two… exhale and count to five…" He let out the scarce air he had taken in. "That's perfect, do it again…"

Barry repeated the exercise a few more times until his body relaxed.

"You good?" Caitlin asked. Once he started nodding, she got off the couch and started walking to the kitchen. "I'll bring you a glass of water…"

"I'm falling for you, Caitlin," he breathed out.

Barry heard Caitlin's breath stop as a haunting silence fell around them. She took a couple of steps back and sat on the couch again, a hand covering her mouth.

"What?" she inquired, in a broken voice.

"I'm falling in love with you," Barry continued, staring right into her eyes this time. "And I know it sounds…"

"Shut up." Caitlin opened and closed her mouth repeatedly. "Now I'm having a panic attack…"

Barry reached out to hold her hands, feeling his heart throbbing in his throat. He repeated the breathing sequence she had taught him to prevent the fear from taking over again.

"I know this is scary," he admitted, talking as fast and clear as he could, although he was barely recovering from his scare. "And I know it looks like I just got attached because of what happened… but it's not like that. I lied, Cait. I don't know if Cisco was busy that night because I didn't invite him…"

Barry stopped talking when he noticed Caitlin's teary eyes. The familiarity of the situation almost brought a bunch of teenage insecurities back, but he had already put himself out there and now had to go all the way.

"Hey, you and I… we had something," he said, basing on a time when Caitlin seemed a remote possibility, hidden behind his new superhero life and a stubborn crush on another girl. "A long time ago. We had something, a connection…"

"What are you talking about?" She interrupted him, impatiently, trying to shake his hands off, but he held her firmly.

"No, don't…" Barry took another deep breath, to stop himself from start stuttering. "Don't look at me like I'm crazy… we had good times, right? Good talks? All the times you sat with me when I was brooding? The karaoke?" A boost of confidence rushed through his veins when her cheeks pushed up at that last word and her lips curved into a smile. "Do you remember that? How we both agreed to move on…?"

"And how that didn't last…"

"I know, the timing was the worst… but, since it's just the three of us at the lab and things are like they used to be, I haven't been able to shake this feeling, like you and I have been missing each other… that's why I planned that movie night," he confessed, receiving a huff from Caitlin. "I didn't plan anything else… I just wanted to spend time with you..."

"Barry," Caitlin interrupted again, giving his hands a little squeeze. "You divorced someone you loved half your life… you're clinging onto anything that looks familiar right now and I'm inside your comfort zone…"

"No, no. The comfort zone thing, that's what I did most of my life with my mom's case and Iris and… I'm not doing that right now, I'm looking around, and you're everywhere. Literally," Barry continued, thinking about addressing the speedforce thing if everything went well. "There's nothing left for me in the past, Cait, but you and Cisco are still a part of one the greatest things that have ever happened to me. I… I got stuck, then I went through what I had to go through… and now it's time to move on. For real. Hey, hey…"

Against anything he had expected, Caitlin started backing off from him before he could finish.

"We work together," she said, grabbing a dirty mug from the table and walking towards the kitchen.

Barry, preventing himself from overthinking, appeared next to her in the kitchen. The stream of air seemed to irritate her.

"Cait," he whispered.

He covered her hands with his to stop her from washing the mug for the third time. Apparently, finding something to clean was the easiest way to avoid him when she wasn't surrounded by test tubes. She turned to him with a blank expression.

"We work together," she repeated, icily. "That's the only answer I can give you."

"And it doesn't make sense," Barry pointed out. "What happened to 'I can't stop thinking about you'?"

"Those were the hormones talking… before the powers incident worked as a wakeup call. It even drove _you_ away."

"I already told you I felt guilty, not… threatened. Yes, I'm mad at myself, but you're doing good. Which was basically the reason why we decided not to go out together."

"Are you kidding me? You think that's what's stopping me?"

"Then what is it? What's wrong now?"

"Me, Barry."

Barry swallowed as he watched taking deep breaths herself.

"Those things you listed… it doesn't matter whose fault it was. I'm broken," Caitlin proceeded. "I've been broken since way before Ronnie, Zoom or the powers. Two weeks ago, we were just messing around and now you dropped a bomb. I can't give you what you want, and I can't be what you need me to be. Everything with me goes wrong somehow. I'm unfixable, and I can't make any promises. You and I… we're not only friends. We work together. If I'm gonna have another failed relationship, it can't be with you."

"I don't wanna fix you," Barry told her, sincerely. "I like _you_ , not that perfect version of you that you like to envision. In fact, I don't even think you're broken. Since I know you, you haven't let anything break you. And I know this because smiling is still the first thing I see you do every morning..."

"Barry." She stretched her arms and put her hands on his shoulders supportively and looking up at him with familiar, disappointing, platonic love in her eyes. "I promise you, you're going to fall in love again… but not like this. Not after a one-night stand. Not because you feel like you have to."

"Why are you saying this? Didn't you hear everything I said before?"

"You're using moments of our friendship to justify this…"

"I'm not. I'm just saying that… I don't need to check the future to know that I got signs about you and me long ago..."

"So, I'm your backup plan."

"No, no!" Barry clenched his fists. He never, ever thought things would go so bad. "You're… a path not taken. Since my marriage ended I feel like I've returned to a… recovery point, as Cisco would call it… and I saw what I've missed, I guess."

Caitlin took a step back, leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed loudly.

"You don't believe me," Barry observed, overwhelmed. He had failed at proving himself, which had been the whole purpose of that visit. "You don't believe me."

Fresh tears pooled in Caitlin's eyes. He didn't know what was worse, if the fact she was hurting him or how that seemed to be the last thing she wanted to do.

"Cait, when you say that this is not the way people are supposed to fall in love…" he mumbled, trying to hold onto something. "When you said that, were you talking about me or were you talking about yourself?"

She didn't make any effort to hide her crying face nor to answer him.

"Cait," he let out, fighting his own tears. "Cait, if you don't have feelings for me, just say it. The conversation can end here, and I won't ever bring this up again."

It didn't take Caitlin that long to work on an answer, but it looked like she had to go through some preparation before getting the same cold attitude she had shown the morning after their night together. Barry knew he wasn't going to like what she was about to say, but the sadness she was trying so hard to hide worked as a glimmer of hope he already knew he wasn't going to let go of that easily.

"I'm so sorry," she apologized. "I can't…"

But Barry didn't get to know what she couldn't do, because a deafening ringing interrupted her. Once they both pulled their phones out they noticed that there were, in fact, two ringing noises.

"Cisco's panic button," Caitlin said, alarmed.

It took Barry a few seconds to react when she awkwardly wrapped an arm around his neck. The contact felt so normal and yet so distant. Trying to keep his broken heart in place to attend their emergency, he picked her up in his arms to run with her to STAR Labs.

"We have a problem," Cisco said, notoriously relieved to see them appear in the cortex.

He was standing in the middle of the room, hands and feet tied up. Roger Peters, the metahuman that has escaped the pipeline, had his hand pointing at his chest. But that wasn't all: three armed men had their guns pointing at his head from different sides.

It took Barry a minute to realize they were all duplicates of Scudder, playing some kind of trick with the light.

He was free.

"What do you want now?" Barry exclaimed, putting Caitlin down. "How did you free yourself?"

"I want to finish what Snart didn't have the guts to: killing you," Scudder admitted. "Thank you for having Peters over. We had an amazing tour, and I could get my hands on this."

Mirror Master used his free hand to show him a twisted piece of metal. Barry identified it as Earth-2 Mirror Master's mirror gun. Harry had brought it to Earth-1 and that's how they got to prison Scudder.

"I knew it had been too easy," Caitlin commented, shaking her head. "He got in here to get caught. He wanted us to lock him up because he knew he could escape and search the building."

Peters let go of Cisco and Scudder made two more copies of himself appear, all of them pointing at their friend's head. Barry had some ideas of how to identify the real one, but he was too close to Cisco to take any risks. Instead, he tried to stop Peters when he noticed him approaching Caitlin, but he phased through his body and fell to the floor.

"Now we have two," Peters celebrated, wrapping an arm around Caitlin's neck from behind.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, pal," Cisco warned him.

Caitlin gave Cisco a little smile, closed her eyes and frowned. Seconds later, Peters let go of her in between screeches of pain. Confused, Barry reached her side and noticed three icicles popping out the back of her neck.

"It worked!" Cisco yelled, writhing inside the various layers of rope. "I'm sorry if I can't clap."

"That stings," she complained, removing the bloody pieces of ice from her neck.

Taking advantage, Barry sneaked behind Peters hit him in the head. He fell unconscious to the floor.

"You got yourself a useless minion, Scudder," Barry grinned, placing a foot on the unconscious man's back. "Let go of our friend. It's me who you want."

Furious, Mirror Master pushed Cisco to his friends. Noticing that he hadn't a gun pointing to his head anymore, he vibed his body to break the rope and freed himself.

Scudder made his other three copies disappear and a dozen more surrounded the trio. The one that was right in front of Barry pointed at him with his gun, right between the eyes.

"You know I can stop that," Barry said, keeping a steady tone.

"Goodbye, Flash," he said, pulling the trigger.

Barry lifted his hand to slap the bullet away as soon as he heard the gunshot, but phased right through Scudder's arm. Shocked, he looked around to find the original.

The first thing he noticed was the blood dropping to the floor, right in front of Caitlin, who was holding an improvised ice shield in front of her.

With a round, little hole in the middle.

"How did you know?!" the Scudder in front of her exclaimed, as the other copies of him disappeared. He was still pointing at Caitlin, who was covering her stomach with her palm. "I was aiming for his back! How did you…?!"

Caitlin, who was fighting to stand still, coughed up some more blood.

"Caitlin!" Cisco screamed, helping her to kneel down.

Barry spaced out for a second, unable to make sense of the situation, but his feet responded at the sight of Scudder raising the gun one more time. He sped to his side and stopped the three bullets he shot. Right when he was about to take out his growing rage on him, a blue ray hit the villain and sent him to the floor.

"My gun is bigger," Harry said, as he entered the room holding a bazooka.

Barry ran to Mirror Master, took the small mirror he was pulling out his pocket and broke it.

"I got you," he said, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.

He laughed and lifted a piece of the mirror Barry had broken, and smiled as he disappeared.

"Dammit," he exclaimed, realizing that Peters' unconscious body had disappeared too.

With things more urgent in mind, Barry ran to Cisco, who was trying to stop Caitlin from bleeding out.

"I'm so sorry," Barry apologized, horrified. "I should've known."

He kneeled next to her and exchanged a horrified look with Cisco.

"Don't look at me! I'm a mechanic. A mechanic!" he yelled.

"Guys, it's not as bad as it looks," Caitlin groaned, putting her own hand over Cisco's to add pressure to the bleeding wound. "It didn't hit my lungs. But the bullet is still in there."

She looked up at Barry, who felt another wave of panic hit him.

"I haven't done this in a person before," he said, knowing that Caitlin expected him to phase through her. "I could hurt you."

"You won't," she reassured him.

Barry knew exactly what he had to do, but the fear of failure was messing with his head. If something, anything, went remotely wrong after she had just saved his life he would never forgive himself.

"Allen!" Harry prompted, holding Caitlin's head.

"Barry. Barry, listen to me," Caitlin squealed, holding his shaky arm. "I trust you. Don't tell anyone, but you're the only thing I trust more than any scientific fact."

Barry chuckled, suffering from that effect only Caitlin had on him. Nothing, nothing was ever so terrible to her. Noticing that both Harry and Cisco didn't seem to be looking at him with the same patience as Caitlin, he vibrated his hand through her body, focusing on feeling the cold piece of metall. Once he did, he pulled it out as fast as he could. Noticing his hitched breath, she gave him a thumb up to indicate that she was fine. Harry took off his jacket and helped Cisco to tie it around Caitlin's waist. Once it was tight enough, the three of them rushed to the medical bay with her.

* * *

Barry fought to keep his eyes open. It was 2 AM and he had done his best to stay awake, because he wanted to make sure Caitlin would be okay when she woke up. He had considered taking her to the hospital and beg to some nurse to keep their discretion about the metahuman gene, but he knew she wouldn't want it.

Right when he was already nodding off, he heard Caitlin moving on the bed. He abandoned his chair and ran to her, noticing how anxiously she was reacting to the oxygen mask she had on.

"I'm here," he reassured her, grabbing her wrists to prevent her from touching the mask. "Don't take that off."

She seemed to calm down once she noticed him by her side.

"Hey," Barry greeted her, with a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Not as bad as thought I'd feel," Caitlin said, in a groggy voice. "Why is this on my face?" Ignoring the previous warning, she took the mask off. For the first time, Barry was able to empathize with her frustration whenever they didn't listen to her medical advice. "It's like we were in a soap opera scene."

Barry laughed in relief. God, she had scared him.

"The bullet fractured two ribs," he informed her, when she noticed the bandage she had beneath her clothes. "You could barely breath when they were still broken."

"When they _were still_ broken?"

Barry took Caitlin's iPad from the table and showed her the X-Rays that Cisco had taken: one from right after they took care of her and another one from an hour ago.

"How?" she asked, referring the obvious recovery.

Barry lifted his hand and showed her a long intravenous line that started in his wrist and ended in her arm.

"You said the bullet hadn't hurt any organs, but I got scared when you lost consciousness and improvised," Barry explained as she looked around, quietly evaluating his medical performance. "The normal transfusion didn't seem to work, so I've been doing this for two hours. It's a pretty tight line, so I haven't lost that much blood…"

"I'm like your parasite," she joked, taking out the needle and grabbing some gauze from the folding table to clean up the puncture wound. "Thank you."

Barry, who had inevitably felt proud of that small discovery, arched an inquiring eyebrow.

"What? Don't you want to take notes or something?" He asked, waving the iPad in front of Caitlin. She tilted her head in confusion. "You know, every time we learn something about my powers you get super excited and..."

He stopped right there and leaned back in disappointment.

"You knew, didn't you?" Barry guessed. "You knew I can cure other people."

"Yes, I did," Caitlin acknowledged, sitting on the bed.

"Since when? Why didn't you say anything? We could've worked on some super healing elixir or something…"

"Because you're not a lab rat." She grabbed another piece of gauze, took out the needle from his wrist and cleaned it too, momentarily forgetting she was the patient this time. "I found out the minute your arm healed after you crashed at the Air Ferris facility. If someone else discovered it, they would've never left you alone…"

Caitlin shut up once she caught him him looking at her with that mix of respect and amusement.

"You didn't even know me," Barry commented, amazed. "And yet you protected me."

"You had been my patient for nine months, of course I did," she replied.

"And you keep on doing it. You've only used your powers twice since Killer Frost left your body… both to save my life."

Caitlin's smile didn't reach her eyes. Barry couldn't tell if she was feeling guilty about their previous conversation or if she had just prevented herself from saying something that could get his hopes up, but he decided not to think about it.

"So… I've been thinking about something," Barry told her, getting more serious. "How do you feel about getting the superhero treatment?"

"Me?" Caitlin snorted, in disbelief. "I'm not qualified to go on the field."

"Neither was I when I first started..."

"I'm not like you…"

"No, you're better."

Caitlin huffed.

"Why now?" She questioned.

"It's just… what you said about being broken," Barry answered. "I understand it, more than you know. I still don't think you've reached your lowest, but I've certainly have and helping people just makes things better. It gives you purpose. Maybe that's the missing piece you need. It would help you see that you're just as capable as any of us."

Caitlin pouted, notoriously touched by his words, and reached out to grab his hand right when Barry was about to do the same thing. They both laughed and intertwined their fingers together.

"So, you want to train me," she guessed.

"Yeah. Look, if what I told you earlier makes you uncomfortable… forget about it. I won't bring it up again," Barry decided, with a shaky voice. The voice of someone who has just crushed his own heart. "It's my problem, not yours."

"But…"

"I mean it. But, if you prefer that I stay away…"

"No." Caitlin squeezed his hand and shook her head. "Please, not again."

Barry hated the part of him that had expected her to say that she needed some space. However, the fact she cared about him enough to put their issues aside not only reminded him of the perfect couple they could've been, but also that he was already lucky enough to have her as a friend.

"I'll be fine," he said, and he meant it. "Just… let me do this. I mean, that thing you did tonight was impressive. I didn't know you could do that."

"Cisco and I were messing around when we discovered it. It's a little harder to do it without my hands, but…"

"See? You got some killer abilities." Barry stopped laughing when he noticed Caitlin's look. "And that was a very poor choice of words…"

Unexpectedly, Barry heard footsteps approaching from the cortex and let go of Caitlin's hand milliseconds before Harry entered the room.

"Hi, Harry," Caitlin said in a shy, squeaky tone.

"It's good to see you awake," Harry greeted her, keeping his distance from the bed as he usually did when someone was injured. "Allen, a word?"

Barry clenched his jaw and turned to Caitlin, probably looking more vulnerable than her.

"I'm okay. Go," she told him, with a wink. "And please get some sleep."

Barry nodded reluctantly. He wasn't sure if Caitlin had noticed, but Harry had definitely seen them holding hands from the distance before walking in, so he didn't hold back from saying goodnight properly: he leaned his head down and kissed her on the forehead.

Without stopping to check her reaction, he stepped away from the bed and followed Harry out the medical bay.

"Look, I know it's none of my business, but I need to know how to behave," Harry started, once they were alone in the cortex. "How long?"

"What?" Barry asked.

"How long have you and Snow been together?"

Barry almost choked on his own tongue.

"We're not together," he corrected him.

"Save it, Allen," Harry grunted, crossing his arms. "Does Ramon know?"

"No, but…"

"Okay, that's all I needed to know. My lips are sealed."

"Harry." Barry placed his hand in his shoulder to add some more emphasis. "We are not together."

Harry wrinkled his forehead, lifted his arms and hit Barry in the head with his palm.

"What was that for?" Barry moaned, in pain. "Why is everyone hitting me today?"

"Why don't you wanna be with her? Are you crazy?" Harry scolded him, with his hand ready to hit him again.

"ME? Are you kidding me? Harry…"

Barry delivered a quick summary of the situation, talking fast and angrily.

"That's… too much information," Harry interrupted, covering his ears and mumbling no sense when Barry added some detail to their romantic encounters. "I don't want to hear about how you begged her. Just ask yourself what you could have possibly done…"

"Nothing, Harry," Barry emphasized, face palming. "I couldn't do anything because she told me to my face that she didn't feel the same way…"

"No, she didn't. You just said that the panic button interrupted the conversation. Secondly"—Harry grabbed Barry by the shoulders and turned him to the med bay door, so he could look at Caitlin through the window— "That woman took a bullet for you tonight. Do I need to remind you that you're faster than a bullet?"

"Scudder tricked me into believing he was in front of me…"

"She had no way to know that. Snow is a good person, but turned off all sense of self-preservation to save you. From that point of view, maybe she's right about not dating teammates… we don't always make the right calls when a loved one is involved."

Barry sighed to the ceiling. Although he wasn't really in the mood to get pep talked by people, especially if they were telling him stuff he didn't want to hear, maybe Harry Wells was the right person to provide the most honest advice.

"How did you know?" He asked, expecting that he had noticed something from Caitlin. "How did you know that something had happened?"

Harry puffed in annoyance and approached a near wall to turn off the lights of the cortex. Barry saw him crossing his arms in the dim light that came from the med bay and, when he was about to ask what was that about, he noticed a golden aura of light around him, like he had just taken off a sweater and the sparks hadn't disappeared.

"It also happened when you left the room to go to the bathroom," the scientist explained. "There's some sort of electromagnetic field… an energy pull that comes from her."

"Yeah, I didn't know it was visible." Unsatisfied, Barry pushed for some more honesty. "Do you think that she lied about not having feelings for me?"

"I don't know." Harry shrugged, delivering a supportive, genuine smirk. "But, if you two are scientifically and visibly linked... I don't know what can be stronger than that."

Harry turned on the lights again.

"Go get some sleep," he advised, just like Caitlin had. "I'll wake Ramon up so he can take her home." Harry rolled his eyes when he noticed Barry grimacing. "The last thing you want to do now is look needy. Be patient, and go home."

Harry didn't give Barry time to disagree, so he watched him go through the door and sit next to Caitlin's bedside. He was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. Not because it was too late, but because he hadn't had a good night of sleep in weeks. And he doubted he could get it, without her.

Resigned, he rushed out the lab, running against the current of speedforce that threatened with pulling him back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey, guys! Again, sorry for the long wait!**

 **For those who are asking about the "speedforce bond", which was prominent in the last chapter, the answer is coming at the very end (Chapter 5). So far I've been writing it as Barry perceives it. He knows just as much as the readers about it, but it won't be long until he starts doing some digging.**

 **I hope this story is somehow helping you through this season of The Flash! Thank you for reading and have a nice week!**

* * *

"One, two…" Caitlin counted, holding Barry's nose between two fingers.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Barry squealed, when she skipped 'three' and straightened his nose with a clean pull. "IT BURNS!"

Both Caitlin and Cisco stepped away from the medical table, cringing.

"That sound will haunt my dreams," the latter commented, giving Barry a towel to put it under his bleeding nose.

"I'm so sorry," Caitlin apologized, pressing her palms together. "You told me not to hold back."

"I know! But why in the face?!" Barry whined, for the first time since they had abandoned the Speed Room, where they had been training. "You ice-punched me in the face! Geez, Caitlin…"

Barry hadn't expected to feel like a jerk too soon, but seeing Caitlin so adorably repentant in her STAR Labs sport gear definitely did the job.

He sighed, momentarily removing the bloody towel from his face.

"You know what? I think you fixed my nasal septum. I can breathe better now," he lied, reaching out to rub her arm. "You did great. I mean, you got me," he added, pointing as his swollen nose.

Caitlin smiled and placed her fingers on his face. Barry closed his eyes in relief when he felt a wave of cold numbing his T-Zone.

"Are you sure that the machine hasn't enhanced you?" Cisco asked, looking up and down at Caitlin. She arched inquiring eyebrows at him. "You've been only three weeks into training and you've already gave me and Barry a hard time…"

"I ran a few tests on myself. Nothing has changed. I'm just _using_ my powers," the doctor answered. "Also, I guess I was angry at Barry for yelling at me," she added, resentfully.

"You were holding back," Barry intervened, in a nasal voice. "Anyway, you defended yourself. You almost cracked my skull open, but you defended yourself. That's what really matters."

Caitlin took her hand off Barry's face and wrapped an ice block of her doing in a towel, so he could use that instead.

"I have to go. I'm late for something," she announced, unhanging her purse from behind the door. "Cisco, will you call me?"

"Yes, wait up!"

Cisco ran out the med bay and returned five minutes later, carrying a gym bag.

"Your suit," he reminded her, giving her the bag. "I installed a little something that will tighten the coat and protect you from attacks. Bulletproof," he emphasized, recalling her latest deadly experience. "You just need to press one of the buttons on each sleeve. The bad news is that now I can't compress it into a female-friendly size to carry it around, but…"

"Just say smaller, Cisco," Caitlin said, teasingly.

"Aaaand…" He twirled his index fingers, to indicate that he wasn't done. "In honor to your first time on the field as yourself, here's your identity concealer."

Caitlin took the blue mask that Cisco had just pulled out from his back pocket, laughing at the irony.

"We'll call you as soon as we hear an alarm," he promised her.

"Thank you," she told him, giving him a half hug with her free arm. "I'll see you guys later."

Caitlin abandoned the room. Although Barry tried not to make a big deal because she hadn't said goodbye to him directly, as soon as Cisco walked into the cortex, he ran after her.

"Caitlin!" Barry called out, before she stepped on the elevator.

"Barry!" She exclaimed, a little startled by his appearance.

Barry was about to apologize for appearing so violently, until he saw her hide her phone behind her back, leaving the message she was typing unfinished.

"I know you like to think about your life while stuck in traffic, but all you'll think about now is how late you are," he told her, now a little curious about where she was heading. "Do you want a ride?"

"That's very nice of you, but I still have to go home and get ready…" Caitlin tried, but Barry raised his hand and shook his head.

"Doesn't matter, I can wait…"

"Barry…"

"Things don't need to be awkward, it's been three weeks…"

"I have a date!"

Barry's mouth opened for a split second. He resisted the need of putting his hand over his stomach, where he was feeling a fire burning his guts. Fortunately, Caitlin had automatically focused her attention somewhere else after the revelation, so he had enough time to compose himself.

(N/A: This is a good time to ask you NOT to yell at me. I have a plan. Trust me xD)

"Now it's awkward," she noticed, after a few more seconds of silence.

"A date," he echoed, making sure he had heard correctly.

"Yeah. Are you…? You know…" She bit her lip and closed her eyes, probably trying to find the right wording. "Are you okay with it?"

"Me? Yeah, yeah!" Barry curved his lips into a forced smile. "With who?"

"You know him, he works at the CCPD… Detective Parsons."

 _A cop… again_ , Barry thought. Dave Parsons had been working at the CCPD for over a month. Barry hated to go to crime scenes with him. In fact, everyone hated to go to crime scenes with him, because he was always too quiet. Barry would've never pictured him approaching a girl to ask her out.

Barry didn't regret confessing Caitlin his feelings, but it felt like he had ruined everything by doing it. Although things had been normal between them, he couldn't stop thinking about how close they had been, and how it would've been smarter of him to go slowly. He should've started by asking her out on a normal date. Maybe things would've gone so great that they would be officially dating already… but no, he had scared her away with a rushed love confession.

However, Caitlin was right about something she hadn't say explicitly: they both deserved better than starting a one-sided relationship that would end up ruining their friendship. Since the rejection, Barry had committed to love her in the only way he could, which was helping her, and he would keep on doing that. Even if there was another guy.

"Yeah, I know Dave a little," Barry mumbled, cursing him in his mind. "He is… shy. Or maybe he doesn't like us very much. Whatever, I'll take you…"

"Barry…"

"Caitlin," he stopped her, trying to summon sufficient strength to keep up that charade. "You've been postponing yourself for too long. We are already helping you with the powers, the training… I'd love to do something about your personal life." Barry never thought he'd ever say a sentence that would equally make him feel good and bad. "I want you to be happy, and…"

Barry's voice faded off as he got lost in thought, staring blankly at the floor. A random memory from college popped up in his head when he glanced at Caitlin again: Years ago, he had read a psychology paper about retrospective bias. This was the inclination people had to look back at past events and think there was something they could've done to get different results. That was exactly how Barry was handling his situation with Caitlin, torturing and blaming himself for not seeing the signs sooner. He should've not taken the future for granted. He should've thought harder about how she had made him smile through the hardest situations, and all those times he had watched her work for more than five seconds. He couldn't believe that he had overlooked that beautiful, perfectly imperfect, dorky, big-hearted woman. Caitlin had been right in front of him for years and he had _just_ seen her, now that they were too close for things not to get complicated.

Barry had to remind himself that he had been in love, engaged and married while Caitlin was grieving, widowed or dating someone else. He was mourning opportunities they never truly had.

They were cursed.

"Are you okay?" Caitlin asked, snapping him out of his trance.

"You were right," Barry declared, in response, making a hard decision. "I was feeling a lot three weeks ago and I guess I clung to you," he continued, feeling the lie burning his tongue like acid. "My feelings for you are purely platonic, so… can we forget about everything I said at your apartment?"

"Sure!" She let out, barely letting him finish the sentence. "I knew you'd come to your senses."

"Yeah, I did."

Barry chuckled forcedly, but Caitlin didn't join him. Her pupils had turned white.

"You okay?" He asked, trying not think he had triggered that reaction.

"Yes. I just need to recharge my powers before I go," Caitlin said, her smile looking strange in contrast with the now blue eyes.

"I don't mean that." Barry had tried hard not to sense her emotions in the past weeks, but this situation had caught him off guard. "I mean the sadness."

"I just…"

Caitlin held her mask in front of her eyes and let out sigh.

"Who am I kidding? I can't do this," she said, handing Barry the gym bag in panic. "I can't do this…"

"I'm not taking that, I'm not tak… Cait," Barry stammered, pushing the bag back to her and grabbing her by the shoulders to force her to look at him. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Caitlin snorted. "I'm a doctor! I'm supposed to heal people, not… punch them in the face!" She pointed at Barry's swollen nose. "I'm gonna get my ass handed to me…"

"Probably." Barry smiled wider when she looked at him with questioning eyes. "But, at the end of the day, you will be fine."

"I'm not afraid of getting hurt, but realizing that I'm not cut out for this and we've been wasting our time…"

"Hey."

Barry reached out to lift her chin up, trying not to look amused by her mini crisis.

"Cait, why are you still on the team?" He asked, letting out a little laugh when she frowned, offended. "It was a rhetorical question! And the answer is: because Cisco and I still get our asses handed to us sometimes! Heroes can't do everything… but you're a doctor. The world has needed you since way before the powers. No matter how you do out there, please remember that. You have always been a hero."

Although Barry had finished his statement, neither of them did anything to break the physical contact. Still gripping her chin, he traced his large thumb across her jawline.

Caitlin seemed too focused on processing his words to care.

"You always know exactly what to say," she concluded, giving him a playful shove.

"Right back atcha," he grinned. "Come here."

Barry had barely lifted his arms when Caitlin smiled, stood on her tippy-toes and wrapped hers around his neck, holding him tight against her. He laughed, trying to recover his balance, and reciprocated the hug, discreetly smelling her hair.

Barry didn't know how long he could hug her before it got awkward, but he was having a hard time thinking that, once they were done, he would have to leave her with another guy. Slowly, he pulled his head back, without separating his cheek from hers to prolong the moment. Feeling his heart beating rampant, he allowed himself one last moment of recklessness and slid his nose across her cheek until their faces were aligned, only to find her lingering on him again, both their breaths labored and irregular.

Caitlin's lips parted, and her eyes fell to his mouth.

"Oh, screw this," she murmured, leaning up.

Instinctively, Barry leaned down but, once his lips ghosted over hers, she ducked her head.

"Screw this… sports bra!" Caitlin said then, taking her hand off Barry's shoulder to palm her back. "It's so tight! So tight…"

"Right!" Barry grumbled, taking his arms off her in embarrassment. "I know the feeling… I mean, I don't! Obviously, I don't wear…"

What the hell had just happened?

Caitlin's phone rang before they could make anything of that situation. She looked insultingly relieved to have an excuse to check it.

"Is that Dave?" Barry asked, doing zero efforts not to look pissed.

"Who? Oh! Yeah. Yeah," she answered, tripping over her words. "He's texting restaurants…"

"Okay, let's go then…"

Barry walked towards the elevator and clumsily crashed against the closed doors. Caitlin shyly pointed at the elevator button and pressed it, to indicate him that they hadn't even called it yet. He gave her another strained smile and let her go first once the doors opened.

* * *

"So…" Joe asked, putting his gun down after firing three clean gunshots at the aim in front of him. The CCPD's shooting range was already empty. "You're moving on?"

"OF COURSE NOT, IT'S KILLING ME!" Barry shouted from the next window, trying to make himself heard above the five failed gunshots he had fired. When he was done, he took off the protection glasses and looked at Joe. "I cannot believe this! Can you believe this? We fixed her problem, she told me she wasn't ready to date again… and now she's seeing another guy? She didn't even give me a chance…! What?" He inquired, when he saw Joe giving him nervous looks.

"Do you mind putting the gun down while you're angry?"

"Why didn't you tell me this was so cathartic?" Barry asked, twirling the gun around his finger and leaving it on the table behind them. "Can you believe it? She doesn't even know Dave! Damn, what do _we_ know about Dave? What if he's great? Or worse: what if he's a douchebag? I poured my heart out to her because she kept on sending mixed signals and I got nothing. He saw her once, God knows where, and already has a date with her… I… I can't believe this is happening to me again…"

He plopped himself in a near chair, sighing in frustration.

"Well, don't look at me. Honesty is usually the answer, but she's being quite unpredictable," Joe opined, shrugging. "You're also giving up too easily. It's one date, Barry. A date you helped her to go on."

"Because she's doing great and I don't want to do anything to stand in the way," Barry said, stubbornly defending his selflessness. "I want to help her, but it's like she didn't even need me… which, ironically, makes me want to do even more. I guess she learned not to lean on me after the whole Killer Frost thing…"

"Or maybe she's just doing some self-discovery now that she is alone, you know, in her own body." Joe grabbed a gun cleaning kit from a wall shelf and gave him a small pat on the back. "Just be patient."

"Yeah… well, I was patient. I let a few weeks pass and now she's having dinner with Detective Pretty Boy 2.0."

Barry's phone rang, just in time to interrupt one of Joe's reassuring sentences.

"Robbery in progress," he informed, happy to have a reason to escape his problems. "Gotta go."

He ran to STAR Labs to pick up his suit and headed to Central City National Bank.

He appeared all suited up at the front door and, when he was about to go in, he noticed a blue silhouette next to him.

"I wanted to make an entrance, but you were already too close," Caitlin said, crossing her arms.

"Hey!"

Barry smiled widely when he saw her. She was wearing a long, well known blue coat that briefly triggered bad memories, except that she was wearing pants and the mask on her face.

"How did you get here so fast?" he asked, enthusiastically.

"I was eating there," she reminded him, tilting her head towards the corner where Barry had dropped her two hours ago. "One of the cashiers activated a silent alarm, so I ran outside and changed in the next alley. They're still inside. What's the plan?"

"You didn't need to bail on your date," Barry told her, although he didn't feel remotely sorry that she had. "Robberies are kinda easy."

"I know, but I told you I'd be here."

Barry snorted, strangely smitten by her commitment.

The two robbers finally stepped out of the bank, each one holding a gun and a bag.

"Who are you supposed to be?" One of them said, mockingly pointing at Caitlin. "The Game of Thrones convention was last weekend."

"There was a Game of Thrones convention?" Cisco intervened, from the comms.

"Cisco, I told you that the coat was still too long!" Caitlin complained, putting a hand over her ear.

"Calm down. I didn't think people would make that connection without your white locks. The coat is aerodynamic, for your ice bridge thingy."

"I don't do the _ice bridge thingy_! She did! It makes me sick…"

"Guys…" Barry tried.

Barry kept an anxious eye on the robbers while his friends were arguing, because he didn't want Caitlin to miss the chase.

"She looks pretty cool," the other robber commented, shrugging.

"THANK YOU!" Barry shouted, sharing a millisecond of male complicity with the low-life. "See? You look great!" He told Caitlin.

Taking advantage of their distraction, the two robbers raised their guns. Barry left Caitlin's side and returned one second later, holding them in his hands. Screaming, both robbers started running down the street.

"Are they… running?" Caitlin asked, innocently amazed by human stupidity.

"Yeah," Barry sighed, crossing his arms and leaning against a pillar of the building. "Robbers are not very bright. I mean, Earth-38 robbers still try to shoot Kara…"

"What are we waiting for? They are getting away."

"Not if you help me." Barry gave her a cheeky wink. "Let's suppose they are escaping and I'm not fast enough to catch them…"

"Oh, not this song again…" Caitlin interrupted him, face palming.

"Let me finish, woman." Barry bobbed his head impatiently, with Cisco laughing in his ear. "Let's suppose I need a little boost to catch them…"

"Guys, they're about to escape for real," Cisco warned them. "There's a van with no plaque parked one block away from you, Main Street and Edison."

Barry stepped forward, came down on a running position and turned to Caitlin again.

" _Make it so_ ," he quoted.

"Right," Caitlin remembered, throwing her arms forward.

Alternating both hands, she created a long ice road. Barry started running, sliding across it, which helped him to go faster and reach the next corner in time.

"Did Barry just quote Captain Picard?" Cisco grunted in the comms. "We haven't watched The Next Generation yet."

"We saw a few episodes last night," Caitlin answered.

"WITHOUT ME?!"

"It took you forever to return from Earth-19. We were bored."

"It was an emergency!"

"Are you and Cynthia even getting back together?"

Trying not to think that he would probably have to watch those episodes again with him, Barry caught the robbers right before they got in the van and shot out a rope that Cisco had compressed in his suit sleeves. He ran around each one, tied them up and dragged them back to the bank's entrance, where a police car was already parked.

"Good job," Barry told Caitlin, once he left the robbers with the cops and returned the money.

"I didn't do anything," Caitlin corrected him, humbly. "But it was really fun."

"You'll appreciate bank robbers once you handle something more dangerous. Also, you never know when they might not be normal people. Having a little back up can't hurt, so thank you for coming."

"Uh, oh!"

Barry turned around when he saw Caitlin bitting her lip. It didn't take him so long to detect the source of her anxiety: Detective Dave Parsons, Caitlin's date and Barry's co-worker, was approaching them. Barry vibrated his face and Caitlin, who didn't know where to run, hid behind him and changed her eyes color to white.

"Thank you, Flash," the detective said, once he was in front of them. "And…" He added, noticing Caitlin behind Barry.

"Frost," Barry answered, vibrating his vocal chords, to keep Caitlin from using her voice.

"Oh, it's like with the Green Arrow."

"Excuse me?" Caitlin inquired, putting on her old tilting, frosty voice and making Barry's heart skip a beat.

"You know, when The Arrow disappeared another guy took his place and called himself the Green Arrow. You're Frost, taking Killer Frost's place, right?"

"I… guess."

She exchanged a look with Barry, who was cracking up behind his distorted face.

"We probably lost our table already. Do you want to go for some ice cream?" Dave asked Caitlin, whose eyes returned to brown immediately. "Oh, come on, Caitlin. I've sat in front of you for over an hour and we both got a notification when the robbery started. You didn't even bother changing your hair."

"I… can explain," Caitlin babbled, looking at Barry to silently apologize.

"You don't need to." The cop turned to Barry. "Don't worry, I know you guys wear masks for a reason. I won't say anything."

"Thank you, detective," Barry said, with a feeling of annoyance that had nothing to do with Dave's discovery.

Dave reached out for a handshake. Barry, who hesitated before taking his hand, thanked God to be able to hide his face. The idea of that guy kissing Caitlin in front of her door later that night was already making him feel uneasy.

 _Be cool_ , he thought, feeling a vein popping out his neck.

"Flash," Dave sighed, tapping the symbol on Barry's chest in awe. "I wasn't expecting to meet you this soon."

Barry knitted an eyebrow under his mask. Caitlin cleared her throat, interrupting the mini fanboy moment.

"Flash needs to get me out of here, so I can change back into my normal clothes," she told Dave.

"Oh, sure," Dave remembered. "I'll wait here."

"Are you sure?" Caitlin made her eyes glow again. "I don't know if you processed… but I'm a metahuman."

"So?" The cop shrugged. "It's not like we are not surrounded by them."

Barry felt something catch in his throat when Caitlin smiled at him in response. Joe would've told him that he was being a drama queen, but that little interaction actually convinced him that Caitlin still had a shot at a normal life. With a normal guy.

"Let's go," Barry prompted, in an unintended, possessive tone.

Barry picked her up and ran to her apartment. Once they were in her bedroom, he returned for her gym bag and put it on the bed.

"He seems like a guy good," he commented, feeling nauseous.

"Are you mad at me?" Caitlin asked, getting in the bathroom.

"What?" Barry stood next to the bathroom to speak to her through the door. "Why would I be mad at you?"

"For being such a klutz and exposing myself."

"Of course not. Dave is with the CCPD, he won't talk. Thank God we have humble cops who don't mind vigilantes. They wouldn't want us to retire."

Caitlin stepped out of the bathroom.

"You're wearing… jeans," Barry pointed out, looking down at her, since it was a big change compared to the clothes she had worn before.

"Yeah, so?"

"You don't do that."

"I do now."

"And a t-shirt," he added, still stunned by how beautiful she looked with anything.

"I'm not going to put on fancy or work clothes to get some ice cream. Let's go."

Caitlin rolled her eyes when Barry teasingly pointed at her sneakers with his boot. Laughing, he picked her up to take her back.

* * *

The next week, Barry and Cisco took turns to take Caitlin out, so she could learn to synchronize with the two of them, which wasn't particularly hard.

That day in particular had been a success, when a bunch of construction workers had activated explosives meant to bring down an old office building. Caitlin had outdone herself, preventing the building from falling by freezing one side, which gave Barry and Cisco an extra minute to evacuate all the people inside.

Once they made sure all the injured were in ambulances, Barry returned to his lab to take care of some cold cases he had been piling up.

" _So here I aaaam with ooooopen aaaaarms. Hoping you'll see what your love means to m…"_

Barry turned to the lab door when the music stopped abruptly, still holding the pen he had been using as a fake microphone.

"Really, dude?" Cisco huffed, with his finger on the on/off button of Barry's speaker.

"I… thought there was no one left on the floor," Barry mumbled, slowly walking towards his friend in humiliation. "What are you doing here?"

"Just a little worried…"

"Oh, no." Barry hit his forehead with the folder he had just grabbed from another corner of the lab. "Laser tag! Cisco, I'm sorry, I totally forgot!"

"Barry…"

"Just give me a minute, I'll leave some of this stuff where I can see it tomo…"

"Barry!"

Once Barry turned to him again, Cisco held out his hands to stop him.

"It's Thursday. Laser tag is tomorrow, you didn't miss it," he told him, reassuringly. "But you've been acting weird, bro. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Barry promised, calming himself down. "I've just had a lot of work to do…"

"Yeah, I can see that," Cisco said, alternating his looks between the speaker and the pen Barry was leaving on his desk. "I know you, though. Doesn't seem like work is the cause, but the solution. What's with the depressing playlist and that brooding superhero look? Let me tell you, Oliver would be proud."

Barry wished that Cisco could read his mind, so he didn't have to tell him anything.

"You know? Something I learned this past year is to let go of the things I can't control or didn't work out," he explained, cryptically. "I'll eventually let go of this too. Don't worry about me."

"Okay," Cisco accepted.

"Since you're already here, don't you want to go to laser tag now? It's on me."

"Nah, I'm tired. Just wanted to check on you. You should try and get some sleep."

Barry nodded, although he wasn't planning on following that advice. He had tried everything to rest in the past weeks, only to wake up from his nightmares not so long after falling asleep.

Just when Barry started considering leaving with Cisco, Dave Parsons walked into the lab with a folder under his arm.

"Hello," he told Cisco, before quickly pointing at Barry. "Allen, thank God you're still here…"

"What do you need… _Dave_?" Barry inquired, putting on that exaggerated smile he had been greeting him with since he was dating Caitlin.

"I need to talk to you." The cop left the folder on Barry's desk and politely turned to Cisco. "Alone."

"Oh, I was just leaving," Cisco said. Before walking out, he pulled Barry closer to susurrate in his ear. "I don't know who this girl is, but you should try Bryan Adams. I know Cynthia loves Bryan Adams."

Barry chuckled as he watched his friend leave, then sat behind his deck and swung his arm to offer Dave the seat in front of him.

"I'm listening."

"I know you're The Flash," Dave shot.

Barry remained stony-faced. It wasn't like just a few people knew his secret identity, so this wasn't something he wasn't exactly prepared for.

"What?" Barry snorted, grabbing his stomach. "Have you seen me? I can barely do a chin up."

"Cut the crap, Allen," Dave said, crossing his arms smugly. "I have my sources."

"Your sources?"

"Caitlin."

Suddenly livid, Barry stood up, leaned over the desk and grabbed Dave by the collar of his shirt. However, the cop took his index finger to his lips to stop him from making noise, then looked over his shoulder.

"What?" Barry huffed, tugging the fabric of the cop's shirt.

"I thought I had heard something," Dave answered, casually, like he hadn't noticed that Barry was assaulting him. "We don't want anyone to eavesdrop."

"What the hell were you talking about? Caitlin would never…"

"Thanks for confirming it." The cop pointed at Barry's hands, politely requesting him to let go of him. "Do you mind?"

Barry let go of Dave, not without giving him a push that almost made him fall off his chair.

"Relax. Caitlin didn't tell me anything," Dave said, with a suspiciously friendly smile. "She didn't have to… See, after the robbery I had expected her to feel free to talk about working with The Flash… turns out, she wouldn't stop talking about her good friend: Barry Allen." Despite being angry and anxious, something resembling a smile crossed Barry's face. "It wasn't that hard, you know?"

Barry, highly worried about the negotiation that was apparently coming, returned to his defiant attitude.

"What do you want from me?" He asked.

"Your help," Dave answered, sliding the folder he had brought with him across the desk and placing it in front of Barry's eyes. "Three cases I couldn't solve in Opal City."

"That's it?" Barry opened the folder, without taking his eyes away from Dave's face. "What if I say no? You'll tell everyone who I am?"

"What? Don't be ridiculous. Why would I do that?"

"I don't know. You tell me..."

"Barry."

Dave held both his hands out after using his first name, patiently asking for his attention.

"I'm not blackmailing you," he clarified, with a convincingly sincere tone. "I'm asking for your help. I know you have a thing for cold cases, but the fact you're… you know, this city's hero, makes you the only person who can actually do something. The OCPD closed these cases without even considering metahuman activity. They don't want to scare people away from the city… but this is not right. These victim's families need an answer."

Barry sighed deeply. Part of him had hoped that Dave was a bad guy, because then he would feel free to hate him.

"Okay," he accepted. "I'll help you."

Dave waved his fists in celebration, like a big kid.

"Don't worry, you guys are not that obvious. I'm just new, so I pay more attention," Dave continued, happily. "Also, I am a Flash fan. I grew up reading Jay Garrick comics, so…"

"Jay Garrick comics?" Barry scoffed, in surprise.

"Yeah. I thought you had named yourself after him."

Barry nodded in agreement, pretending he hadn't say anything. Maybe one day they would be close enough to tell him that his childhood hero existed on some other earth.

"Also…" Dave continued. "No hard feelings. It's not your fault that things didn't work out between Caitlin and me..."

Barry, who had left his chair to put Dave's folder in his bag, stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around.

"What?" He asked, raising his palm. "What do you mean things didn't work out? I thought you guys were still dating."

"Dating?" Dave scoffed, fixing his tie. "There wasn't even a second date. When I walked her home, I told her that it seemed like she had some unfinished business. It's not like I'm looking for something serious, but she came with so much baggage…"

 _Watch your mouth_ , Barry thought.

"What do you mean?" he inquired, remaining civilized.

"Wow, so that's still unfinished…" Dave noticed.

"What do you mean, Dave?"

"Maybe I shouldn't…"

"Dave!"

Dave sighed in fake exhaustion, because it was clear that he was enjoying to keep Barry in suspense.

"You're being surprisingly slow," he commented, making Barry grimace in impatience. "Allen, the only way a girl talks that much about another guy during a date is that the guy is her brother or…" He made a gesture with his hand, expecting Barry to guess the end of the sentence, but he frowned in response. "Okay, here's the thing: haven't you thought that maybe she likes you?"

Barry stopped himself from displaying vulnerability or looking desperate.

"Not really," he lied, walking around his chair. "Also, I bet she talked about our friend Cisco too."

"Vibe? Yeah, she did," he grinned, amused by Barry's scandalized expression. "He would be the brother, in this case."

Realizing that he didn't need to go all macho on Dave anymore, Barry let the mask fall off. While looking at the floor, he remembered Cisco's words about him resembling Oliver lately. His pride was still preventing him from doing some more digging, and his co-worker seemed to notice.

"The day I asked Caitlin out, she was here to see _you_ ," Dave added, getting Barry's attention back. "I don't know where you were. She seemed… a little shaken up. I offered her a cup of coffee, thinking that maybe she was here to report something… but then she told me she was your friend and needed to tell you something. She left before you got here, though. Judging by your expression, she never talked to you."

Barry tried to tell himself that that little piece of information didn't necessarily mean anything, but an invasive feeling of hope was already coming up into his guts and bubbling in his throat.

"You know, it's none of my business," Dave acknowledged, scratching the side of his head. "But the fact that this is the least hostile you've been to me since last week suggests that you're glad I told you this, so… If I were you, I'd go for it, man."

Barry touched the bridge of his nose. His head was spinning.

"Thank you," he said, keeping some distance between them. Dave was still a stranger after all. "I'll look into your cases as soon as I can."

"Thank you," the cop returned, automatically getting off his chair. "Goodnight, Allen."

The time it took Dave to reach the elevator felt eternal for Barry, who ran outside the building as soon as he heard him abandon the floor. So did the time that took him to cross the city, with his right mind desperately flashing warning signs. He knew he was being impulsive. He knew he was being impulsive _again_. But he didn't have to do anything this time. All he needed was to watch and analyze.

He needed to know.

When he was about to turn left into Caitlin's street, he saw the lights and the buildings shrink and disappear, like the space had just bent over itself. He stopped, finding himself in front of STAR Labs. He palmed the sleeves of his jacket when he noticed that they were on fire.

"So weird," he gasped, immediately realizing that the reason why he had been pulled there was that Caitlin wasn't home. "This bond thing, so weird!" He shouted, looking up at the sky, in case the speedforce was listening.

Barry rushed inside and stopped a few meters before the entrance of the Speed Room.

He found Caitlin in her training clothes and boxing gloves on, cautiously hitting the bag in front of her. Barry had heard her excusing herself before, saying that she didn't want to start hard and break her knuckles, but she was so tough for that.

She was simply holding back, still afraid of losing her perfectly crafted emotional control.

"Hey," Barry said, leaning against the door.

Caitlin hid her hands behind her back, like he had caught her red handed.

"Hi," she said back.

"What are you doing here so late?" Barry asked, slowly approaching her.

"I couldn't sleep." Caitlin tapped on the bag with her glove. "Thought I could make some progress on my own."

"That makes two of us… the sleeping part."

Caitlin smiled at him and turned to the punching bag again. Barry, noticing her form, approached her from behind and instinctively fixed it, pulling her by the hips to straighten her back.

"That's good," he told her, when she turned her head to him, silently asking for his approval. "No, no," he giggled, when she threw a flat punch. "The point of the form is using your whole body." He grabbed her from behind again, pressing his torso against her back, his chin resting on her shoulder. "Like this."

Barry guided her movements until he felt her using her own strength to throw the punches.

"Perfect," he told her, with his cheek pressed to hers.

"Thanks," Caitlin murmured.

"You're welcome."

Although the exchange was over, Barry tightened his embrace around her, turning the lesson into a back hug. Caitlin turned to him and, just like that evening in front of the elevator, glared at his face in awe, her lips slightly separated. Her hands ghosted over his, pressing to her stomach.

 _Haven't you thought that maybe she likes you?_

Right when Barry tried to babble something, Caitlin chuckled and quickly rotated her torso, using all her strength to send him to the floor.

Barry let out a groan when he felt his back hit the mats they had placed all over the floor.

"Gotcha," Caitlin celebrated.

"You did," Barry moaned, from the floor.

"Oh, my God! Are you okay?" Caitlin stopped laughing and quickly kneeled next to him. "I'm so sorry! It was a joke, I saw that on YouTube earlier…"

"I'm okay, you just gave me a good scare," he laughed, getting up with her help. "Wow."

"I know. I just… I just want to figure out a way to get rid of attackers without piercing icicles through their skins."

"I see. YouTube is teaching you more than I am."

"That's so not true."

Barry beamed at her, despite knowing she was just being condescending. He knew that most of what she had learned in the past weeks had been thanks to previous experience, but he would never get tired of seeing her trying to reassure him.

"Listen… I'm sorry about last week," he apologized. "You know, when I made you angry enough to punch me. The fact you're here tonight makes me think that you feel some pressure from me…"

"Barry, it's okay..." Caitlin reassured him, rapidly interrupting herself to let Barry continue.

"I just wanted you to know that I'm not trying to turn you into a warrior." He gestured with his hands, trying to imitate Sara Lance holding her stick. "I'm no warrior myself… I just don't want anything happen to you..."

"I know." Caitlin grabbed his hands, when she noticed him getting more and more stressed. "I know."

"That's good. That's good."

They exchanged a prolonged smile, until Caitlin seemed to remember something.

"What were _you_ doing here so late?" She asked, dropping his hands.

"I…" Barry let out, his mind wandering around the most unconvenient answers. "I wanted to check on you, I guess."

"Why? How did you even know I was still here?"

Barry sort of panicked at that question. Being a speedster, it wasn't exactly a problem to find someone, but he didn't want to lie to her again. Most importantly, he didn't want to scare her again. Telling her about a speedforce bond that he didn't quite understand yet definitely counted as scary.

"Barry…" she said, in that overly soft tone he was already familiar with. "What are you doing?"

"You need to be more specific," he pointed out, although he knew where she was heading.

"What's with all this attention and overprotection? Why are you being so nice to me?"

"I've always been nice to you…"

"Not like now… you're being excessively thoughtful, it's kind of freaking me out."

Despite his best wishes, Barry felt a first wave of anger growing in his stomach. So, he had to live with the fact Caitlin had rejected him twice, watch her go out with one of his co-workers and, now that things were slowly feeling normal again, put up with her questioning his motives?

"Why do you think I do it?" Barry ventured, already prepared. "I mean, if it freaks you out, you might already have a theory."

"You feel guilty about the powers and everything else, you already told me that," Caitlin answered.

"Well, you're wrong. I do it because I care about you. Me feeling guilty is another story."

"Well, I don't buy it."

"Wait, what?"

"I don't think you do it because you care."

"Are you for real right now?"

"Yes, I am."

Barry let out a dry chuckle and rubbed his temples.

"Caitlin, you're questioning a five-year-old friendship. We've been through literally everything together," he calmly stated, displaying his disbelief. "I think it should be me asking what the hell is wrong with you. Why would you say something like this? I've always cared about you…"

"See? That's where you're wrong!" She snapped, pointing at him. "The only reason you're so responsive to Cisco and me is that your attention is back in the lab, but we all know how things would still be if you were still…"

"If I was still what?"

Caitlin flinched.

"Forget it," she said, pulling back her word punches as well.

"No, please, continue," Barry prompted, bitterly. "Seems like you haven't forgiven me after all…"

"It's not that I haven't forgiven you… but at some point, you stopped being there for me. We know that." A twinge of pain crossed her face. "And now that nothing has kept you really busy for over a year, you're doing all this stuff."

"Caitlin, that's so unfair… we are friends. All I am doing is honor that."

"Would you still do it if you were…?"

"If I were what? Married to Iris? That's what this is about?"

Caitlin put her hands on her hips and slowly recoiled, regret written all over her face, despite not being the one who pronounced the words. Barry's wild guess hadn't come out of nowhere. It was something he had been suspecting, considering her impossibility to give him a clear answer.

"Well, the answer is: I don't know," he said, shuggring. "I don't know if I would, Caitlin, because guess what? I'm not married anymore. That happened for a reason… some things fall apart, some things stay the same, some new things happen… being stuck with the things that have fallen apart in my life is not who I am anymore. This is my life now. I'm divorced. You guys stuck around and I'm being the best friend and teammate I can. That's all that matters."

"Barry, I shouldn't have…" she started, apologetically.

"No, don't Barry me, I'm not done." Barry held his hands up, struggling to form his next sentence. "You know what? Suddenly everything that has happened in the last couple of weeks makes sense. Now I see why it seemed so easy for you to believe me when I said that my confession had been in the heat of the moment and I was totally fine with you seeing someone else." He saw the exact moment when realization struck her, accompanied by a blush creeping up her neck. "I wasn't, Caitlin. I was sad. I've been sad ever since... But now I'm heartbroken, knowing that, if you already doubt of how much I care about you, you will never believe how inspired I am by your strength and how hard I've _fallen_ for you."

Barry put his hands behind his head and turned his back on her. He had done it again.

"You lied to me," Caitlin said, accusingly. "I asked you if you were okay with it and you lied."

"You think? I thought you didn't believe in my feelings!" Barry snapped back, raising his voice. "In fact, you believe so little in my feelings that you went on a date with a co-worker of mine you apparently didn't even like, considering you wore jeans to the second part of the date!" He added, not ready to tell her that Dave had told him everything already.

"Excuse me?!" She took one step forward, trying to reach his eye level. "What does my wardrobe have to do with anything? Are you really gonna be t _hat_ guy?"

"There's nothing wrong with your wardrobe, but the last time I saw you wearing jeans you were volunteering at the children's hospital! What I mean is that you weren't trying to impress this guy!"

"Well, I'm not even seeing him! We had absolutely nothing in common and the date didn't go well!"

"How could that possibly go well? You almost kissed _me_ in front of the elevator an hour before! Yes, I did notice!"

Caitlin swallowed and, despite looking so defiant, Barry noticed her looking at his lips again.

"You have feelings for me, Cait," he said, in the humblest tone he could. "I chose to believe you didn't because I can't bear any more heartbreak, but I know it. I feel it. I see it…"

"Barry, I can't… we can't let ourselves fall into this trap," she said, shying away from the real answer once again. "I know we've been sort of drawn to each other lately, but it's not real…"

"So, you do feel something."

"What if I do? I don't want to act on this. I don't want to wake up one day and realize you're just comfortable with me…"

"You keep talking about me, like you were already settled and I was the weak link…"

As soon as he saw Caitlin's eyes turning red and watery, Barry cleared his throat to stop his own need to cry.

They were fighting. God, they weren't even a couple and they were fighting.

"Caitlin, the fact I wasn't there for you at some point doesn't mean I can't be there now, make it up to you or form a stronger bond, like we already have," he declared, patiently. "And the fact we were married to other people once doesn't mean we can't fall in love again. If everything was determined by the first time, there are a lot of things we would never be able to do again, for the rest of our lives. Can you imagine?" He dared to take one lock of hair from her face and put it back in her ponytail. She squirmed under his touch. "Look, I know I don't deserve you. And I don't wanna get your way… but I see it, Cait. Right there in your eyes. You do have feelings for me and I can't understand what you're doing."

"Barry. We're going on the field together now…" She reminded him, reaching out for his hand. This time, to keep it away from her. "That's all I am doing. We can't afford to put each other above other people. People we're trying to save."

"Then we avoid going on missions together. We go alone or with Cisco."

"You see what I mean? Would you really be willing to change the team dynamic for us to be together?"

"It was just a suggestion!"

"Well, it won't work out!"

Barry put his hands behind his head once again, trying to get a small break from the conversation. He could feel that they had already reached the heart of the problem. All he needed to do now was find a solution she was willing to cooperate with.

"You're being way too practical," Barry observed, after the long breathing pause. "It doesn't matter if we're a couple or not, I'm in love with you. This dynamic is forever changed already."

"Well, you're gonna have to put those feelings aside!" Caitlin said, more demandingly. "You have to keep your eyes on the ball..."

"Or you should simply go on the field with Cisco."

"What?"

"You're not going out there with me anymore. I don't want you to."

Barry remained stoic, resisting all the skeptical looks Caitlin was giving him. He was risking way too much with this improvised plan he had just come up with. But, what if he had been using the wrong strategy? What if he did the opposite of what he had been doing so far?

What if _he_ shut _her_ out?

"See? This is exactly what I was trying to avoid!" She yelped, in disappointment. "You're making things way too complicated!"

"No. You are!" He clapped back. "Because you couldn't just live with the fact I am helping you without expecting anything in return and brought this up again. We were doing pretty good before this."

"So now it's _my_ fault?!"

"For once, yeah, I think it is, Caitlin!" Barry stood there, trying not to focus on her face. He didn't want to see the effect of his words. "Accepting help and love from your friends, that's voluntary. Falling for someone is not. You can't be mad at me for something I can't control."

"You're infatuated!"

"I'm not! I'm a grown man for crying out loud! I know what I want!"

"Why do you do this?" She asked, throwing her arms up in exasperation. "Why do you always give more than you get? Why don't you look for someone who would be willing to do the same good stuff you do?"

 _There_ , he thought, noticing that subtle change in her speech. Barry couldn't predict how her mind worked, but he knew her enough to know that, if she really had made up her mind, she would've left the room three minutes ago. And the fact she insisted on bringing up a third party, Iris and some hypothetical girl, was also very telling.

She was testing him. Probably not consciously, but she was.

"Because I'm looking at her," he let out, cursing himself for choosing the most generic line ever. "She's given me so much, but she won't let me do enough for her. She's pushing me away."

"Oh, my God," Caitlin grumbled, covering her face with her hands. "You're so annoying..."

Barry wanted to think that she was trying not to laugh, but her hands fell off her face and revealed an exhausted expression.

"We need a break from each other," she concluded, taking him by surprise.

"I completely agree," Barry said, going with the flow. "So… we're not going on the field together until you accept the fact that I love you and I can't turn that off. You need to learn how to live with that."

Although Barry had done his best to remain calm, he couldn't help mirroring her stunned expression.

Had he just told her that he loved her?

"No," Caitlin said, coolly "No. We're not going on the field until you accept that you're infatuated, you need some self-esteem and…" She puffed hard, trying to regain some control. Her cheeks were so red that Barry had to resist the random temptation to laugh. "And..."

"Then I guess we won't ever fight crime together again..." Barry gritted out, his angst making hard to believe that he still had the situation under control.

"Fine!"

"I wonder what new excuse not to be together you'll have tomorrow."

"Don't," she muttered, raising a threatening finger. "I won't be here tomorrow."

"Fine by me."

"Fine."

"Fine."

Caitlin turned her back and started a furious walk towards the exit. Once she was at the door, she whirled around one more time.

"FINE!" she yelled back, before slamming the door behind her.

Driven by anger, Barry punched the desk behind him. Lightning escaped his arm, sending all the equipment to the floor. He panted, trying to make peace with the fact his stupid plan had failed. He had not only ruined things between them again, but also kicked Caitlin out of the lab accidentally. Not so long after he vowed to help her, he let his emotions get the best of him.

However, he didn't have enough time to cry over the spilt milk, because the door of the Speed Room had opened again. Annoyed, Barry crouched down to pick up the bunch of electronics he had dropped before Harry or Cisco could ask him anything, but stopped when he glanced up and saw that Caitlin was back.

Barry got up, loathing himself for the awful, displeased look he was giving her, despite being right about some things he had said.

"Are we done?" She asked, crossing the room serenely.

"What?" Barry asked, crankily.

"Yelling."

Barry automatically relaxed his face in surrender, his chest feeling heavy at the sound of her calm voice.

What had this woman done to him?

"I am," he answered, greeting her with a slow smile.

"Me too," Caitlin blurted out, in obvious relief.

Barry noticed that both were struggling to find something to say next, which only seemed to intensify that tension between them. Since he had already put one foot in front of him when he saw her propelling forward, it was impossible to tell who had made the first move. Maybe he had sped to her, maybe Caitlin had run to him. He didn't know. All that mattered was that, somehow, they reunited halfway. He instinctively picked her up when she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him desperately.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, against his lips. "I'm such an idiot."

"No, I'm sorry," he said, in a high-pitched tone, happiness taking over his senses. "I was pushing you…"

"You were right. You were right about everything. I didn't want to go out with him. I was at the CCPD to see you…"

"I know..."

"I wanted to tell you I wanted to be with you, but I was so afraid. Then he asked me out and I accepted…"

"I know…"

"I tried to cancel, I was sending him a text when you caught me." Caitlin leaned her head back to look at him, her hands anxiously pressing to his cheeks. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to think I wasn't into you, but then you started asking and I sort of let it out to know if you were still into me, but then you said you weren't…"

Barry lifted a hand to bring her head down and press their foreheads together.

"You're…such… a dummy," he told her, giving her one peck with each word. "Breathe now..."

"You were right about me making excuses," she proceeded, ignoring his suggestion. "I don't know why I kept this going for so long, but I never wanted you to give up on me."

"I never did." Barry kissed her eagerly on the forehead, on the cheek and on the nose, barely believing his luck. "I ran here because Dave told me almost everything you just said. And how you spent the date talking about me," Barry added, teasingly.

"Not the entire date…" She corrected, receiving a cheeky look from Barry. "Fine... I guess the only thing I wanted to talk about was the person I wanted to be talking to."

He stared at her tenderly as she rubbed his nose with hers. A sense of peace washed over him, putting his speed thinking to work. In a blink of an eye, a whole lot of memories flashed behind his eyes: Caitlin leaning over him when he had woken up from his coma. Caitlin looking at him from the other side of the room. Caitlin doctoring to save his life. Caitlin hugging him a little bit longer during a goodbye. Caitlin asking him to stay with her until she fell asleep. Drunk Cisco and Caitlin singing "So What" at the karaoke bar to cheer him up. Cisco telling him that Caitlin had attended Flash Day, after he spent six months thinking that she hated him.

He kneeled on the mats, with her still wrapped around his body like a koala.

"Cait," he mumbled, voice shaken from feeling so much. She raised her eyebrows in response to her name and smiled attentively. "I meant it before… _I love you_."

"I believe you," she told him, her eyes resting on his with pure, unconditional trust. "I do."

Barry's heart skipped a beat when she leaned down to kiss him, still amazed by the sudden turn of events. Unlike the bruising kiss they had already shared, their lips locked calmly this time, and their hands started wandering over each other's bodies. Barry leaned forward to carefully drop Caitlin on the mats and hovered over her. As soon they managed to pull each other's shirts off, Caitlin felt down Barry's torso and tried to unzip his pants, but he pinned her hands above her head and they lost themselves in kissing. Her concentration seemed to drop even more when his lips started descending from her ear to her neck, nipping her skin.

"We'll have to delete this from the cameras," she reminded him, breathless from the slow thrusts of his hips against hers.

"As soon as we're... ouch! Done," he gasped, when she bit down his lower lip and her nails scratched the small of his back.

Caitlin's hands ascended to the back of his head to pull him back to her and she slid her tongue in his mouth. Barry's pulse started racing as he kissed her back, and he only realized how much when he felt energy projecting out of his body. He opened one eye to see the screen of the mistreated equipment crack next to him.

Barry knew that was the worst moment to explain anything to Caitlin, so he played it cool, wondering how it was possible that he hadn't shocked her.

"Did you hear that?" Caitlin breathed out.

"No," he lied, reaching under her to unclasp her bra

"Oh, my God!"

Caitlin took her hand off Barry's hair and grabbed his arm to stop him.

"What? What is it?" Barry stilled his action and raised himself on his elbows to look at her. She was covering her eyes with her free hand. "Are you okay? Do you want us to go somewhere else?"

"No, Barry..."

She shoved his face away from hers and grabbed him by the chin to turn his head to the door.

"Oh, my God," Barry agreed, noticing that they weren't alone.

"I believe that's my line," Cisco said, in shock, holding his Star Wars mug in a weird angle and letting all the content spill on the floor.


End file.
